


you are gigantic as the things that you adore

by willinplaid



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: After effects of the Drift, Angst, Breach Horror, Cult of the Kaiju, F/M, Group dynamics, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 53,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1836409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willinplaid/pseuds/willinplaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the closing of the Breach, the PPDC continues working because of how little they knew about the Breach and the Kaijus in the first place. Newly instated Marshall Herc Hansen keeps the place running, while Raleigh and Mako help train new Jaeger pilots and Newt and Hermann keep studying the Kaijus and the Breach. However, not everyone wants the Breach to stay closed.</p><p>The appearance of a mysterious businessman with an interest in reopening the Breach leads to contact with the Cult of the Kaiju, who have a real interest in getting their hands on Newton, the only person to drift with a Kaiju not only once, but twice.</p><p>When Newt is kidnapped by the Cult of the Kaiju, the rest of the team has to travel to Alaska to save him and keep the Breach closed. Turns out the apocalypse might not be cancelled but rather postponed for a little while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Plan B

The world had been prepared for how to deal with an apocalypse, and for twelve years that’s what the nations of the world and its citizens did. Deal. However, canceling an apocalypse brings its own host of problems. The aftermath of the Kaiju bridge collapse had thrown the world into a frenzy that was almost reminiscent of the initial attacks. For the first time in a long while, the world didn’t know how to proceed without the threat of Kaiju attacks hanging over their heads.

This wasn’t felt nearly so much as at the PPDC. For the first few days, the celebrations and good feeling engulfed the Shatterdome, and aside from the few who needed to retreat to their quarters to mourn their dead, drinking and carousing reached such a peak that newly instated Marshall Herc Hansen was forced to bring the celebrations to heel.

After the collective hangover that seemed to last for twelve years was over, the work turned to what was to be done with all the personnel and crew. Marshall Hansen entered discussions with world leaders and the military. After some heated discussion, and several treaties considered and discarded, it was decided that the Shatterdome would continue operation, if downsized in urgency.

Jaegers were repaired slowly, and new pilots came in to train under the old. As the only remaining pilots not promoted, Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket were put in charge of training new pilots. Tendo Choi remained on as technician, and attempted to alter the Shatterdome’s operations from wartime to peacetime. Newton Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb stayed to continue to study the bridge and the Kaiju threat, assessing whether there was a possibility of it being opened again.

As the world does, things progressed.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newt pushed his glasses onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes irritably. For the past two hours, he had had his eyes pressed against a microscope, studying the brain structure of the most well-preserved Kaiju specimen they had. He would always be more comfortable with his arms elbow-deep in guts. At least then he could feel concretely what he was dealing with.

It had been a month since he drifted with Hermann and a Kaiju brain and managed to help save the world. It sounded so matter of fact when you stated it like that, but nothing about it felt matter of fact to him. His inflamed eye had healed and the nosebleeds had lessened, nearly gone away completely, but sometimes when he slept, the images from his two drifts invaded his dreams, inhuman things that left him waking covered in sweat, left with a buzzing panic in the back of his head.

Newt thought that it was probably what he deserved from drifting with a dead Kaiju brain with less than approved machinery on the spur of the moment. He wondered, not for the first time, if Hermann experienced the same kind of thing. The drift had changed things between them in a significant way, but neither of them was willing to talk about it, and Newton was faced with the same crotchety, disapproving Hermann as ever, and he was hesitant to broach the subject.

Stretching his legs, Newton looked over at Hermann’s perfectly organized side of their lab. Hermann must not have gotten the message about the end of the world being averted, because he seemed to be as immersed in his work as ever, even though the urgency was more or less gone. He was currently trying to balance two heavy textbooks on the edge of the chalkboard while writing furiously some mathematical equation that Newton would attempt to make fun of if he didn’t have such a raging headache.

Newton stepped over the yellow line separating their halves of the lab and looked up at Hermann, balanced precariously on a footstool, his bad leg shaking almost imperceptibly. Newton probably wouldn’t have noticed before the drift, but among all the memories he shared with Hermann, he also discovered how much Gottlieb’s leg hurt all the time. His stoic manner would never lead you to believe it.

“Hermann.” Newt called up to him on the ladder.

Gottlieb didn’t even seem to hear him. His pinched face was screwed up into a look of concentration that only happened when he was running numbers through his head so fast he couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Newton liked to call him the Human Calculator, which Hermann didn’t find amusing whatsoever.

Newt sighed, opening a textbook at random and reading a few lines. Something about imaginary numbers and theoretical physics. He made a face and closed it, dropping the book loudly on the desk. Give him dead body parts any day of the week.

Gottlieb schooled his expression from one of everpresent irritation to one of specific irritation that was specially reserved for Newton as he returned from his near trance.

“Yes, Dr. Geiszler?” He stepped down but continued to write long strings of numbers onto the third blackboard filled.

“Oh, we’re back to Geiszler now? I thought having your brain open to a recently strangled alien specimen would have changed your attitude. I’m hurt, Hermann.”

Gottlieb gave him a long-suffering look. “When you interrupt me from completing an equation off the top of my head, you will most certainly be Dr. Geiszler. Now what do you want, Newton? I’m busy.”

Newt pointed at the clock on the wall. “It’s nearly 8 o’clock. You do have to eat sometime.” Hermann grumbled over that particular point, but picked up his cane and walked with him toward the mess hall.

Despite the late hour, the hall was absolutely packed with personnel from all over the base. Newton and Hermann sat down next to Tendo, who was busy shouting instructions to technicians at the other end of the hall in Cantonese. They were soon joined by Mako and Raleigh, who had come into the mess hall side by side, as they always did, their movements seeming to be in sync.

Mako was rubbing her shoulder absently as she dug into her food.

“What’s wrong?” Tendo asked, bringing his attention away from the disgruntled technicians.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Mako said, waving her hand. “One of the trainees today just pulled my shoulder the wrong way, is all.” Newt really hadn’t had much contact with Raleigh and Mako after their first meeting, but frequently ended up eating at the same table because Hermann always had to ask Tendo some question or other about the base’s equipment.

Hermann was currently leaning over to Tendo to ask him whether he had bothered to implement one of his latest equations into the Shatterdome’s defense system. Newt rolled his eyes and began to dig in to his food. He wasn’t sure how much defense the Shatterdome needed now that the clock had stopped.

Raleigh looked at Newton in concern. “Are you feeling alright? You’re looking a little...”

Newt spoke through a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Like a raccoon corpse? Yeah, I know. I’ve had this headache all day. It’s killing me. Nothing some good old aspirin couldn’t cure.”

Raleigh looked skeptical, but dropped the subject. Newton gave up on his plate of food eventually, slipping away from the table carefully. In the hallway, he leaned up against a wall and knuckled his forehead intensely. The headache actually was worse than he had let on, and it was even getting so bad that he couldn’t see clearly even with his glasses on.

Reaching his tiny quarters, he pulled the door shut and took his clothes off, collapsing on his bed with a groan. Maybe the lack of rotting entrails in his room would help the incessant pounding behind his eyes, and before he knew it, he was asleep.

He was floating in dark waters, watching the daylight above him receding until it was all but gone. Through the water, he could hear a loud thrumming coming from below him. He tried to twist around and look, but it was pitch-black, and his limbs wouldn’t cooperate. Suddenly, there was a change and he wasn’t drifting through benign waters, but sinking into a groaning hub. There was crackling light around him, and he felt more than saw himself being pulled into a deep cavern from which there was no return.

With a half-strangled croak, Newton awoke, bringing his hands in front of him in some sort of self-defense. However, when his waking mind caught up with sleep and realized there was nothing to fight off, Newt sunk back onto his pillow with a groan, looking at the faint strip of light coming from the hallway outside.

After a shower, Newton felt marginally less apocalyptic, and made his way to the lab, where Hermann was working as intensely as ever.

Newt placed his only two specimens of the Kaiju thyroid area together, and went to work trying to discover the exact mechanisms of their hive mind. The brains he had were too degraded to get any kind of real information out of it, so he had turned to the hopefully next best thing.

When the fourth piece of Kaiju he had attempted to study literally fell apart in his hands, he pushed it aside with a loud groan.

“That’s it! I’m done. New plan. Time for plan B.”

Hermann looked up disinterestedly. “And what would Plan B entail exactly? The specimens you have are too degraded for real study. Formalin can only do so much to slow down decay. That’s why I prefer to work with numbers. They do not decay over time.”

“Yes, thank you, Hermann, for your description of your clearly superior area of study!” Newton said sarcastically. “All I need is some more Kaiju specimens! Some new ones, some fresher ones.” At those words, a look came over his eyes that Hermann didn’t like one bit.

“No, oh no. You will not go back to the Boneyard, Dr. Geiszler. Hannibal Chau is insane. He already was insane, but now that he cut his way out of a newly born Kaiju which had eaten him, he is probably even more insane. He won’t give you any more specimens to use.”

Newton shrugged. “He did last time!”

Gottlieb got down off of his footstool. “That was a special deal you got because of Marshall Pentecost. You don’t have something like that again!”

Newton pulled on his jacket, hunting around for a sheaf of papers he had placed on his desk a few days ago. “I’ll figure something out. Improvisation, Hermann. It’s the spice of life.”

Hermann looked uncharacteristically angry. He took a few steps toward Newton, his cane tapping on the ground. “Absolutely not. I don’t want to-” He cut off there, but Newt knew he was thinking of finding Newt on the ground of the lab, convulsing after being connected to an alien brain. “You know what? Fine. Go antagonize a crazy person. Par on course for you.” He returned to work, scratching the chalk angrily against the chalkboard.

Newt hesitated. “Hermann, come on. You’re being a little ridiculous, don’t you think? I’ll be fine.” Receiving no answer, Newton shrugged and headed for the door.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Boneyard had not changed at all since Newton had last been here. The people and bikes still circled slowly around the huge Kaiju ribcage taking up the near skyline. Miraculously, it hadn’t been crushed in the attack that Newton had been in the middle of in this area.

Following the strange signs he had followed the first time he came here, Newton made his way around the shops and up the stairs. This time, it was the middle of the day, and everything was more visible when it wasn’t raining. He had brought the small flashlight just in case, but he was surprised to see he remembered the way.

Newton walked up to the small shop that entered. The closed sign was turned on the door, and there weren’t any large men standing around the door like last time. Nervously, Newton jiggled the handle, hoping that they hadn’t moved shop. He wouldn’t have the first clue where to find Hannibal and his fascinating collection. The door opened, and he walked in carefully, the musty interior a strange contrast to the loud bustle of people right outside.

Every other shop in the area was open for business, so there was no reason this one should be closed, unless Chau’s workshop wasn’t here anymore. Newton groaned, but ran his hand over the far wall just in case. If he could figure out how to open the wall, maybe there would be a clue as to where they had gone.

After digging his hand into every crevice he could find, in the middle of the wall, he finally found the right one, and the wall shifted to the side, and Newt stepped back in surprise. Stepping forward, he saw unfortunately that the jars that lined the shelves the last time he came in here were gone.

The large room had others branching off, but unfortunately, it looked like the majority of the area was empty. It looked gutted, as if everything had been carried off in a hurry. There were tables abandoned, and small piles of paper resting on the floor. Newton went over and started to read the scraps left over, but none of them were what he needed. They all seemed to be inventory lists, which were a moot point now that the inventory wasn’t even here anymore.

Newton was about to investigate more when there was the sound of footsteps entering the room. He twirled around. Three people had climbed through the wall. There were two, a man and a woman, flanking the man in the middle, who looked warily at Newton, hands dropping to their holsters automatically. The man in the middle could not look more out of place in the Boneyard. While the other two were in everyday clothing, he was dressed richly in a tailored suit. He had been saying something about moving the rest of the merchandise when he came in, but stopped.

Newt opened his mouth. “Hey, look, I wasn’t- I wasn’t stealing any of this stuff or anything. I’m just here to- Do you guys work for Hannibal Chau? Because I actually met him. We had a thing- he lent me a brain.” He was rambling and he knew it, and he tried to stop himself from saying something embarrassing.

The man and the woman looked at each other, but the suit answered him. “No, we do not work for Hannibal Chau. Who are you?”

“Uh, I’m a scientist, which actually isn’t a concern of yours, but I need to find Hannibal and get a Kaiju brain off of him, so if you happen to know where he is, you should tell me, because that would be very helpful.” The man in the suit looked fairly uninterested in Newton, but at the mention of scientist, he took another look at him, and with a strange look, stepped forward.

“You want access to a Kaiju brain? You wouldn’t happen to be Dr. Newton Geiszler, would you?” He moved away from the door at those words, and Newton wondered if he could just cut around them and go out the door. Normally, if someone recognized him, he would have started preening like a peacock, but even he had enough common sense to be concerned when a perfect stranger knew his name.

“Might be. Who’s asking?” Newton winced internally at the cheesy line, but the man in the suit didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ve read a lot about you, Dr. Geiszler. I enjoyed your paper on drift patterns and their effect on the categories of the Kaijus. I was also very interested when I heard you managed to drift with one. Not only once, but twice. What did it feel like?”

The man was beginning to have the same cadence as a person with a deep connection to what they were talking about, and Newt began to seriously plan a route to the door, and was waiting until the man and the woman behind him moved enough so he would have a chance. “Well, you know. Kaiju brains.” He said nervously. “It wasn’t a big deal. Just, you know, more alien than normal Jaeger drift connections.”

“Fascinating. I wonder if I might ask you a question. Do you think it would be possible for the Breach to be opened again? There are many competing opinions flying around, but I haven’t seen any from an actual scientist involved with the Kaiju, and certainly none with your... expertise.”

Newt began moving toward the door slowly. “I don’t really think that’s a viable possibility. We did nuke their universe, and it’s gonna have to be tough to come back from something like that, so we can hope we don’t have to worry about something like that.”

The man stepped in front of Newton. “You see, Dr. Geiszler, I would really like to have a longer conversation about this with you. I wasn’t expecting to meet you here, but you have to take advantage of events when they come across. I would greatly appreciate it if you could come with me and my associates here.” Both of the aforementioned associates not-so-subtly shifted their jackets to the side to reveal guns tucked into their respective waistbands.

Newton chose this moment to make a break for the door. Unfortunately, spending most of his time in a lab staring at dead alien parts didn’t leave a lot of time for training like the Jaeger pilots, and he only made it about four steps into the store beyond the hidden area when the lackeys caught up to him quite effortlessly, to his embarrassment, and grabbed his arms. Before he really knew what was happening, Newton was marched out of the store quickly and down to the street, where he was ushered into the back of a waiting car. He sat sandwiched between the two as the man in the suit got in across from him.

The suit immediately took out his cell phone and began to read some texts on there and ignored Newton’s presence immediately. Newton began to panic. There had to be some way of getting out of this situation quickly before they even got to their destination, where he was sure it would be too late. He saw with relief that the doors were unlocked, and he hoped he would be able to take them sufficiently by surprise.

The next time the car paused at a stop light, Newton bided his time, seeing out of the corner of his eyes his guards tense slightly in anticipation of his escape attempt. He waited until the car began to pick up speed again and they relaxed. Before they were moving too fast to jump out, Newt brought his elbows out and hit them both in the face. They let out a yelp and he leapt for the car door. Pulling it open, he braced himself and threw himself into the street, feeling hands grab at him, snagging on his jeans. He hit the street with a sickening thud.

He saw wheels coming straight toward his face, and he rolled as fast as he could, horns honking at him. Newton came to rest in the gutter. Thankfully, he had hit a fairly dry spot, and he got to his feet, looking down the road for the car. It seemed to have been pulled along by traffic, but it had its lights on, and was trying to pull off to the side, although it was hemmed in by the other cars.

Newton used his head start to take to the streets. He started running and didn’t stop until he was many blocks away from where he had jumped. From there, he found his way back to the familiar sight of the Shatterdome, getting past the security with relative ease. On his entrance, he was unhappy to spot Raleigh and Mako making their way toward the cafeteria. Before he could turn away, they caught sight of him and came over to him, faces concerned.

“Dr. Geiszler, are you alright? You’re bleeding all over your shirt.” Mako noted, pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket and handing it to Newton. He put a hand up to his face and it came away wet.

“I might have just jumped from a moving car.” Newt said, dabbing his face with the kerchief.

“Might have?” Raleigh and Mako gave each other a look, and Newt sighed.

“Okay, I definitely did that. But it was because I was almost definitely half-kidnapped.”

Mako stepped forward to take his arm. “Okay, I think you need to go to the infirmary right away.”

Newton nodded. “I probably do. But you also need to go get the Marshal, because I need to tell him what happened to me. We might need to be worried.”

Still looking skeptical, Raleigh promised to go find the Marshal and Mako led Newton down the hallway to the elevators.

When Raleigh led the Marshal into the infirmary where they were stitching up Newton’s graze, Hermann was behind them, leaning stiffly on his cane. Knowing he would have to head off the inevitable argument that would spring up between Drs. Gottlieb and Geiszler, Herc stepped forward to address Newt.

“So what’s all this I’ve been hearing about kidnappings and jumping out of cars?”

Newton yelped when the nurse pulled a final stitch through his eyebrow, but then began his story. All four of them looked less than convinced about his story, and Hermann looked like he wanted to start an argument, but as Newt went on, they looked less irritated and more engaged. When he got to the part about the man in the suit, Herc frowned and started tapping his fingers on the counter next to him absently.

Newt finished talking, and for a moment nobody said a word, and so Newt, unable to stand a silence, piped up. “So yeah, man, aside from the obvious weirdness of what just happened, the guy was talking about the Breach opening not like something that would just happen, but something that could be changed. Like he wanted to make it open again. And judging from his suit, I’d say the dude has connections. So I don’t know, you might want to be worried about this guy.”

“Not to mention he knew who you were for some reason.” Hermann said unhappily, having moved to a footstool during Newton’s tale.

Herc finally spoke. “I suppose this should probably be looked into. Unfortunately, you haven’t given us much to go on. Without a name or a good physical description, I don’t know how we would be able to find him.”

Newt shrugged. “Well, that’s the problem. He was so boring-looking. He had an American accent, but other than that was so nondescript I don’t think any description I could give you would actually be helpful.”

Raleigh cut in. “Well, those guys were in Chau’s place, right? I’d be willing to bet there isn’t much that he doesn’t know about his own operation. Maybe if we can talk to him, he’d be able to give us more information.”

Herc shook his head. “I’m sure that’s a good line of inquiry, but I can’t spare the personnel for that. I need you two here training our new recruits. I’m not going to send good people off on investigating something that might not even be a threat.”

Mako interrupted carefully. “Sir. If Dr. Geiszler is correct, this could be a very large problem. I think a few hours spent talking to Chau would justify the lost time training recruits. Most of the mornings are spent working on physical stamina, which they don’t really need supervision for.”

Herc looked amused. “I suppose that means you are volunteering for the job, Miss Mori?” He thought for a moment longer, then turned to Hermann. “Dr. Gottlieb. You’re the mathematician. Is this really possible? Could the Breach be reopened from this side?”

Hermann seemed to consider. “Well, considering the fact that we don’t really know how it opened in the first place, it could be. We only ever reacted to the Breach already being open. I find it highly unlikely that the Kaiju are completely incapacitated on their side. There’s already a weakness on this side of the Breach, and it could be opened using the right conditions.”

Herc thought for a second, and then came to a conclusion. “Very well. Ms. Mori, Mr. Becket, I’d like you two to go talk to Chau and find out what he knows about this man. I’m sure Choi would be able to tell you two where to find him. This is still a precaution, so find out what you can, assess the threat, and then we can decide whether this matter needs to be looked into further.”

“And what about Newton? Should we be worried about his safety?” Raleigh asked.

Newton started to protest, but the Marshall cut in. “Mr. Becket is right. I think if you plan on going outside the Shatterdome again anytime soon, you should really think about bringing someone along who is trained in combat, doctor. For your protection. You wanted me to take precautions, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Good day, gentlemen, Mako.” He left the room, and Raleigh and Mako gave him a look and then left the room as well.

The doctor finished stitching Newton’s eyebrow and put a bandage over it. Newt saw Hermann shaking his head, and he hopped down from the counter. “What could you possibly be angry with me about now, Hermann? You can’t exactly say this is my fault.”

Hermann headed for the door, Newton coming up behind him. “Only you could go out on a normal day and be kidnapped by shady individuals who are trying to destroy the world for the second time. Not very many people are capable of such feats. I guess I underestimated you, Newton.”

Newt rolled his eyes. “Trust you to turn this whole situation back on me. Thanks, Hermann. It means a lot.” They continued bickering as they walked down the hallway and entered the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! This is a work in progress, although I already have a whole ton of it written, so expect fairly frequent updates. I will try to be consistent and update at least every couple days.


	2. Missed Connections and Closer-than-Comfort Encounters

Mako and Raleigh pulled up to the building whose address was written on the sheet of paper Mako had clutched in her hand. Tendo had given them a strange look when they asked for Hannibal Chau’s last known address, but pulled over to the computer and typed quickly into some files.

“He is part of the black market, and since there are no more Kaijus coming through for him to get his hands on, he’s not exactly calling us up to chat, but it’s unlikely he has moved shop in the past two weeks. It does take a lot of time to move your collection of alien guts somewhere else.” Tendo scrawled an address on a slip of paper and handed it over to Mako. “Good luck, you guys. I’d be careful. I heard he has quite a temper ever since he got chewed up by that baby Kaiju last month.”

Raleigh walked up to knock on the door, but before he could, the two of them were surrounded by Chau’s men, who looked at them suspiciously.

Mako held up her hands slowly, and spoke to them in Cantonese. “Excuse us, but we would like to talk to Hannibal Chau. We don’t mean any trouble. We work for the Shatterdome.” Two of them conversed quickly, and then nodded at the door, leading Mako and Raleigh inside. They walked into a large apartment building, and instead of going up, took to the stairs in the basement, cut off from the rest of the building by a large metal doorway.

Mako and Raleigh emerged into a huge open area. The entire basement area of the building had been converted into Chau’s new workshop. All the walls had been knocked down, and there were tables everywhere with personnel working on various parts of Kaijus and processing them into containers.

Hannibal Chau, looking as disgruntled as usual, turned around as the pair walked up to him. “So you’re the ones who’ve been sitting outside the building for the past 20 minutes. The wonder pilots who saved Hong Kong, eh? I suppose I should be thanking you for all this cash you dropped into my lap.”

Raleigh looked unsure of where to look at Hannibal because of his dark glasses. “I guess you could look at it that way.”

Hannibal waved away a few assistants who were standing around him. “Well, I don’t. It was also your people who are the reason that I got chewed on like a rag doll by a goddamn Kaiju newborn.”

Mako put a hand on Raleigh’s arm, stopping him from making a retort. “Mr. Chau, I’m afraid we have gotten off to a bad start. I’m very sorry for the pain it must have caused you, and I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be attacked like that.” She privately thought that his inconvenience didn’t quite match up to what she lost a month ago, but figured that saying this would not ingratiate him to their cause.

Hannibal waved his hand dismissively. “Whatever. What do you two want anyway?”

Raleigh stepped forward. “Well, we figured you would know about pretty much everything that happens in your circuit. There was an American in a very expensive suit sniffing around the remains of your last base. Do you know anything about that?”

It was hard to tell when his eyes were not visible, but Hannibal was almost certainly staring him down. “I don’t know why I would tell you even if I did. We’re not exactly compadres, are we, compadre? We had a mutually beneficial thing going when Kaijus were still crashing and bashing down the coast, but now you are an obsolete organization and I’m a criminal.”

Raleigh’s nostrils flared, but he tried to keep himself under control. “You might be interested in this guy, because he seems to want to open the Breach again.”

There was a pause. “Say again?”

Mako took up the thread. “Yesterday, Newton Geiszler went to your last base to try and get in contact with you, but there was an American there instead who was talking about opening the Breach. He was sifting through the things you left behind.”

Hannibal nodded. “Geiszler was that hyperactive little ball of shit that wanted to drift with alien brains, yeah? I might know about this guy, but who says I don’t want him to succeed? Kaiju remains are a lucrative business.”

“Because there are always other businesses for you to get into. But if the Kaiju come back, they could destroy everything you built here, and guys like you are way too self-obsessed to give up something like that.” Raleigh said.

Chau sighed, and gave in. “You might be right about that. This guy has been sniffing around my operation for weeks. I don’t know what the hell he wants exactly, but the fucker probably didn’t even realize that we were poking into his business right back. My people did some digging, as a precautionary measure, obviously. I know who the guy is, but not what he’s doing here.”

“A name could be very helpful.” Mako said earnestly.

“Michael Harmon. He’s an executive for some military contract company. Weapons, equipment, stuff like that. PM Webb Corp, I think it’s called. But there’s something fishy about that company. We did a quick check into the finances, just to be thorough. The company has personnel and a paper trail leading through them. But there’s only a couple dozen personnel being paid. The money just seems to circulate between them. None goes in or out. It’s obviously a front for something else. That’s as far as I looked into it, and that’s as far as I will. Now get out of here, before I get my men to shoot you on principle.” Chau gave them a nod, and then turned his back, getting back to his business.

Mako and Raleigh were unceremoniously hustled out of the building, and they ended up back on the street. Mako checked her chunky watch that looked too big for her small wrist. “We should be getting back, Raleigh. We said we would only be gone for the morning.”

Raleigh nodded, and the two of them started to walk back. He shouldered her gently, and she leaned back into his side, smiling. The one part of her life that hadn’t fell apart after their battle had been Raleigh. The two of them fell into an easy rapport, and she sometimes felt that the two of them had known each other for much longer than two months. People said they always appeared in unison, and they walked almost everywhere in tandem.

Although the effects of the drift only last for a few hours afterward, Mako always felt as if she knew exactly what Raleigh was thinking without having to say anything to him. They operated together much more on body language than words. When the two of them were training, their almost perfect unison made it difficult for one of them to get an advantage over the other.

She knew that everyone expected the two of them to become lovers, especially after she lost her adopted father and they saved the world. It wasn’t exactly that she was opposed to the idea, but after the drift, where every thought and feeling was automatically available to your partner, the thought of simple sex didn’t seem to even come close to that sensation. She felt closer to Raleigh without ever touching him than any other person she had been physically intimate with.

By the time they arrived back at the Shatterdome, it was almost past lunchtime, and they quickly dropped off Michael Harmon’s name with Tendo, asking him to see if he could pull anything up. He gave them a look and said that he was a technician, not a researcher, but agreed to do his best.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermann set down his piece of chalk with deliberate tension, rubbing his temples. Newton had played the same obnoxious song at high volume for the fifth time in a row, and he knew it was a deliberate jab at him in order to get him to demand to turn it down. He had been trying to ignore Geiszler, hoping that he would eventually get bored. But of course, he was Newton Geiszler, and he would never give up if there was a chance of annoying Hermann.

Hermann looked down at his desk and noticed with consternation there was a memo slip dropped on his desk. He had been so absorbed in his equations he hadn’t even noticed anyone come in. It stated there was a package for him to pick up, so he took his cane, cantilevered around the desk, and headed for the door.

“I’m going to get a package.” He said unnecessarily over his shoulder.

“Are you sure you’re not leaving because of my jams?” Newton shouted after him. Ridiculously, he was using a Kaiju claw as a drumstick, tapping out a beat onto the metal table, making the bass line of his song even more irritating.

A vein ticed in Hermann’s forehead. “I have a memo, Dr. Geiszler. And stop using our limited resources as percussion instruments.”

Newton’s idiotic dance was hardly interrupted. He looked down at the claw. “What, this, dude? These things are tougher than steel alloy. I’ve actually been meaning to test its tensile strength, see what this baby can stand up to.”

“Then why don’t you do that instead of inflicting your terrible rhythm on this even worse song?” Hermann turned on his heel, and Newton’s intensified drumming followed him out.

In the elevator, Hermann leaned against the wall, his headache thrumming even more, the center pinpoint behind his eye. If anything, his and Newton’s bickering had only intensified after the drift. It had been the most intense and uncomfortably intimate experience of his life. He had agreed to drift with Newton in the heat of the moment. Hermann wasn’t usually so rash, but something about the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of saving the world with your infuriating labmate whom you hated more often than not appealed to him. Mathematics and numbers had always been tantamount to him, but there was a time before his accident when he had more high-reaching goals.

He supposed a remnant of that sense of glory had stuck with him, and so he wasn’t complaining when his mind had fused with Newton’s in an electrifying rush, when he had felt his childhood and Newton’s adolescence and the birth of some protean creature from another dimension, and he wasn’t complaining when he and Newt were rushing back to the Shatterdome, the both of them shaking almost in tandem, nosebleeds and eyes injured to match, and he most definitely wasn’t complaining when, in a rush of adrenaline he had sidled close to Newton with a huge grin and Newton had thrown his arm around his shoulder and the both of them had joined in the celebration, and Hermann had almost forgotten how much he was supposed to hate that skinny-jean-wearing, abrasive man.

However, the next morning when he awoke, bad leg aflame and unidentified pieces of party debris stuck to his face, it was as if he suddenly remembered who he was. He was Hermann Gottlieb, after all. He dealt in certainties and long division and concrete numbers. He didn’t bare his soul, and this was part of what drove Vanessa away.

He could still remember the last time he saw her, and he supposed now Newton did too. She had packed all her bags into her car, he into his. It was the day he left for Hong Kong, and they left behind them the empty house they had shared for years. She had touched Hermann’s face gently and smiled sadly. “We had a good time, didn’t we?” He nodded, and she turned her back and Hermann watched her drive away.

There were times when he regretted that decision, many times where he had picked up the phone intending to call her, but he also knew that it was the right decision. His emotional unavailability and connection to his job didn’t leave much time for another person.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mako made her way up from the deck to find the control station almost empty, except for a few technicians in the corner and Tendo tapping away at his computer in the corner. He swiveled his chair to met her as she walked up.

“Hey, so I assume you’re here about that guy, Harmon, you asked me about?” Tendo pulled out a chair for Mako, and she slid up to the computer screen, looking at all the windows he had open. “I found that company, PM Webb Corp, and it’s as shady as Chau told you it was. There are finances, and employee records, and they even have a fancy website.”

Tendo pulled up the web page for the company, and showed Mako the various pages. “It all feels legitimate, but there’s just something off about this. Notice how none of the company descriptions are all that specific? Contracting is the most it ever says.”

Mako nodded, looking at all the scrolling screens. “So, the company is a mask for something. Is there a way you can find out what?”

Tendo shrugged. “Maybe. But I’m not very skilled at hacking beyond an elementary understanding. This guy, Michael Harmon, doesn’t seem to exist other than a few mentions on this website. He has a minimal web presence, enough to convince me he’s a real person, but other than that he is not there. You might have to resort to more old-fashioned techniques in order to find this guy.”

Mako sighed. “All right. Thank you, Tendo. You’ve been a great help.”

Mako stood up to leave, and Tendo patted her on the shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. I mean, you never know, it could be nothing. Newton’s been known to exaggerate before.”

Mako shrugged. “Maybe. I just have a feeling that there is more to this man than we think.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Harmon’s limousine pulled up to the brightly lit hotel, and he got out slowly, stretching his legs after the long drive. His two bodyguards followed him to the door. His room was on the twelfth floor, but he bypassed the elevators, and made his way to the dining hall. Despite the immense difficulty of shipping supplies to coastal cities, this Hong Kong hotel prided itself on the maintenance of their pre-war aesthetic. They were able to import bread and other scarce supplies, and the chandelier overhanging the room was as grand and expensive, even though they’d had to replace it after Leatherback’s attack on Hong Kong.

Harmon spotted his partner from all the way across the room, and made his way over, stopping at her table until she looked up from her tablet. She inclined her head, acknowledging him, and he bowed slightly before taking a seat across from her. His two bodyguards stood behind him, silent. Heng Guo was the director of marketing for PM Webb Corp along with Michael Harmon, and she always seemed to be working on something on her tablet.

She waited for Harmon to begin speaking patiently. The two of them operated mainly in silence. “Hannibal Chau’s headquarters were largely unhelpful.” He began finally. “He’s moved to a new location since the attack. There was nothing left there except for packing slips and scattered receipts. There definitely weren’t any kaiju remains left. I’m afraid we can’t proceed until we know where Chau’s next location is.”

Guo nodded, turning to her tablet for a few moments. She typed something quickly, and then turned back to Harmon. “It’s taken care of. We should know his current location within the hour.”

“We still need to discuss our other problem. Regardless of the fact whether we get what we need from Hannibal Chau, we still don’t have our expert that we needed for this. Our associates in Anchorage are being very unhelpful.” Harmon frowned.

“We don’t have anything that they want, which is why they won’t cooperate. They can get kaiju remains from other sources. However, they’re our best shot, and if we don’t convince them to work with us, our plan will not proceed the way we want, and there will be no point in all this effort.” Heng Guo tapped her fingers on the table. “What can we give them that is better than kaiju remains? With the breach closed, there are no live kaiju, and that would seem to be the only thing they would be interested in.”

Michael Harmon quirked an eyebrow suddenly, as if having a sudden thought. “Perhaps they wouldn’t be interested in a live kaiju, but they might be interested in a person who had interacted with them.”

Guo steepled her fingers. “Are you referring to the PPDC scientists who drifted with Otachi’s offspring during the Hong Kong attack?”

Harmon nodded and leaned forward. “I didn’t tell you what else happened today. While we were surveying Chau’s shop, one of those scientists was there in the shop as well, looking for kaiju remains, presumably. I tried to bring him with me to have a conversation with us, but he escaped. He’s personally drifted with a kaiju not once, but twice.”

Heng Guo glanced down at her tablet again and nodded. “Far be it for me to know what the Cult of the Kaiju are thinking, but that scientist would either be a commodity or an abomination. Either way, that might be enough to garner their support.”

Harmon took out his own phone, and scrolled down his list of contacts. “Very well. I’ll see what I can do about Geiszler. Tell me when we have progress on Hannibal Chau’s location.” He stood up to go back to his room, and put his phone to his ear.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raleigh awoke the next morning from a dream he couldn’t remember. For a moment, he lay looking in confusion up at the ceiling listening to a knocking at his door. He wondered vaguely if Yancy was coming to tell him there had been another Kaiju attack. He sat up quickly, swinging his legs out to jump out of his bunk, and started when his feet hit the ground prematurely. Then he realized he was in Hong Kong, not Alaska, and it couldn’t be Yancy at the door.

He felt the familiar weight on his heart settle again, and touched the worn edge of the photograph of him and Yancy before pulling a shirt on quickly and pulling the door open. Mako was standing there, and when she saw his sleep-heavy face, she gave him a small, private smile and held up a cup of coffee.

“I thought you would need this.” Mako said, and stepped past Raleigh into his room. At the sight of Mako, the weight eased slightly, and he took a sip of coffee, easing back onto his bed. She joined him, putting her legs across his and jotting a few notes down in her notebook.

Raleigh breathed slowly, enjoying the feeling of waking up slowly with Mako sitting across from him. Mako had changed after they had cancelled the apocalypse. She seemed to be much more sure of herself, but there was also a small sadness that collected on the sides of her mouth that became more pronounced when anyone mentioned the previous Marshall. Mako was missing Stacker deeply, and nobody knew what that was like more than Raleigh.

The first night back after they had been congratulated countless times and joined the celebration for a while, the sight of Tendo standing on top of a table and drunkenly offering a rendition of ‘Bringing Sexy Back’ to the loud cheers of the assembled was enough to send the two of them back to Mako’s room.

They hadn’t even needed to discuss it, but the two of them lay on Mako’s bed, Raleigh’s arms encircling her, and only then had Mako allowed herself to cry for her adoptive father. They hadn’t needed to talk, but Raleigh’s presence had been enough, and eventually they had both fallen asleep engulfed in each other.

Mako made herself carry on, but Raleigh knew that every time Mako thought of Stacker, a deep thorn dug into her side. He also knew that the only way to cope was through, and he didn’t try to offer Mako any advice, because God knew he never wanted to hear any sympathy or condolences from anyone after Yancy’s death.

Eventually, Raleigh decided to get up, and he pushed his legs out from under Mako with regret and took a shower. When he was done, the two of them made their way out of his room and went towards the mess hall. After getting their food, they sat down and ate. Raleigh watched the people pass by. There were so many new people that he barely recognized half of them. Saving the world injected a certain amount of enthusiasm into people that volunteers had doubled for the Shatterdome despite the fact that the threat had more or less passed.

Tendo entered the room, trailing more than a few technicians behind him. His technical prowess had become something of a legend, and the number of applications for his department had skyrocketed. After Tendo’s entourage entered, Raleigh saw Newt shuffle in behind them. He headed blindly for the coffee, filling up two large mugs and adding a healthy measure of cream. He looked sickly and pale, and wouldn’t stop rubbing his eyes. After grabbing blindly at the first food item he could find, Newton spotted the two of them and made his way over to their table.

“Good morning.” Mako said cheerfully, looking up from her notes to acknowledge him. He grunted noncommittally, and sunk his head immediately into a mug of coffee. He was scratching absently at one of his tattoos, and Raleigh saw that Knifehead’s profile was becoming irritated.

“So we went to see Chau yesterday and found out who your mystery man is.” Raleigh said just to start a conversation. Newton lifted his red-rimmed eyes and Raleigh continued. “His name is Michael Harmon, and he’s the CEO of some shady company that doesn’t exist. There’s definitely something going on with him.”

Newton nodded, finishing off the first of his coffee mugs. “Of course there is. Regular people don’t just show up at mob bosses’ old haunts and try to kidnap people.”

Hermann appeared at Newton’s left, holding a mug of tea and two slices of toast. He was nothing if not traditional. He took a seat and then glanced over at Newton. His forehead creased and he looked at Newt’s bedraggled appearance.

“You look like a drowned rat, Newton.” He began amiably, cutting his toast into fourths.

“Yeah, well, you don’t look like a supermodel either, Hermann.” Newton grumbled, stuffing his face full of hash browns.

“Did you even sleep last night? You’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday.” Hermann asked.

“I was working! I was in the middle of something. I might have dozed off for a while. I think that’s good enough.”

Hermann sighed loudly. “That’s not good enough, Newton. You can’t operate optimally unless you have a certain amount of sleep. Even you have your limits.”

“Fuck, Hermann! Quit with the nagging.” Newt got to his feet angrily, taking his second cup of coffee with him. “I have work to do anyway.” He started to walk away, but the Marshall walked up to their table, stopping Newton with his arm.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your meal, but there’s been an incident. I think you all should come with me.” Herc said with a grave face, motioning toward the entrance. The four of them gave each other a look, and followed Herc out of the mess hall.

Eventually, they made their way up to Herc’s office. Herc opened the door, going in first. To Raleigh’s surprise, there was somebody waiting for them. Hannibal Chau sat in the chair across from Herc’s desk, tapping his silver-toed foot against the desk impatiently.

When he heard them enter, he got to his feet and turned to them. There was a nasty gash running from the corner of his glasses to his ear, and his right hand was heavily bandaged. “It’s about damn time. I want to know what you three did.” He pointed vehemently at them with his bandaged hand.

Mako and Raleigh looked at each other. “I’m pretty sure we didn’t do anything. What happened to you?” Raleigh asked.

Hannibal threw his hands up. “Someone broke into my place is what happened. These three guys just up and stormed into the place, shot a few of my guys for good measure. Now, we managed to fight them off, because I don’t pay useless people, but they managed to get in a few licks while they were there. Now, I want to know what the hell is going on, because I didn’t have any problems until you started sniffing around.” He indicated Newton with his finger, and crossed his arms.

Marshall Hansen stood to the side, frowning slightly. “Well, did they say what they wanted? How do you know it wasn’t because of someone you’ve pissed off? I’m sure in your line of work…” He left the last part vague, and Hannibal gave him a self-deprecating look.

“Because I’m in the good graces or at an impasse with anyone who would have the gall to do this, and if they wanted to get my attention, they would have told me why they were there. The only other option is that this has something to do with the shit you are sniffing around in.”

Hermann spoke up slowly. “Well, it certainly sounded like this Harmon was looking for something from you before Newton came yesterday, so it seems this does seem to be your problem. We merely stumbled onto it.” Hannibal looked at him sharply, trying to stare him down. Hermann shifted uncomfortably with his cane, but didn’t break eye contact.

Hannibal finally continued. “The only thing they took was a small collection of dried bone powder. I think they were trying to get to the rest of the collection, but they were put off before they could get there. If you don’t know anything about it, I guess I’ll have to figure things out by myself. As always.” He went for the door, and his associate followed him out the door, glaring at each of them in turn seemingly on principle.

Mako, Raleigh, and Herc began to discuss what the men had needed from Chau and if it indeed could be connected to Michael Harmon, and Hermann glanced over at Newton. He looked preoccupied.

Hermann looked at him inquiringly, and Newton finally looked up. “If Hannibal is right and those people were working for the Harmon guy, I kind of wonder what they needed the kaiju specimens for.”

Hermann shrugged. “Kaiju remains are incredibly valuable. Anyone would love to get their hands on them.”

Newton shook his head. “No, but it can’t be just about the money. I mean, the guy obviously has money. He has to need them for something else. I mean, maybe he needs to use them to try and open the Breach.” Newton looked up at him, eyes wide and surprisingly vulnerable, and Hermann felt himself shiver in time with Newton.

However, he shook himself out of it. “Don’t be ridiculous, Newton. It would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to reopen the Breach. Using dead kaiju will certainly not help the situation. They are not connected to the hive mind, and so can’t even be used to connect with the rest of their species.”

Newton nodded slowly like that made sense, but he still looked uncertain and worried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the title of the story, sorry about that! I thought the old one wasn't a very good title. The new title is from a Cloud Cult song, Complicated Creation. I suggest you look it up, it's a great Newt theme song in my opinion.


	3. The Last Argument of a Dying Man

The sea came to meet him again. Sluggishly, he moved through through the water, the crackling, electric power of the breach reaching above him. The cold water of this alien ocean came to him, but he pushed through it, feeling the comforting buzz of his brethren behind him.

He moved upward through the water, at a pace that seemed glacial, knowing he had to complete his directive. Breaking the surface, he breathed in the foreign air above ground, seeing the distant light and knowing he had to get closer.

The closer he got, the clearer he saw, looking down upon the assembled buildings, hearing the distant sound of sirens. Far below him, almost insignificant, were the running throngs of creatures beneath him. He pushed his foot down, feeling the ground break beneath him.

He felt dull joy in breaking these feeble structures. They took so long to erect, but so little time to destroy. He felt the panic in the streets below, and knew he just had to keep walking inland until there was nothing left to destroy.

Newt awoke jerkily, feeling the twin pulls of the hive mind and a hand on his shoulder. Eventually, he opened his eyes, wondering vaguely why everything was sideways. Only then did he connect the distant shouting to his immediate vicinity, and turned his pounding head to the side, seeing Hermann’s pinched face hovering above his. At Newton’s movement, Hermann’s face changed into one of relief.

“Newton. Are you alright? I couldn’t wake you up. I was worried you-” He cut out there. Newton sat up with a groan, temples throbbing. Every color in the room seemed hypersaturated, and the small, scratchy sounds of Hermann’s clothing and background hum of his own equipment seemed to drum invasively on his ears.

“Wha happ’ned?” Newt said vaguely. His right eye felt as if someone were trying to shove an oversized ice pick through it, and he found it difficult to concentrate on Hermann’s voice, although he could feel the steady presence of Hermann’s hand gripping the back of his neck.

“You fell asleep at your desk, which isn’t all that unusual for you, given the hours you sleep, but then you started making these noises and you fell onto the ground. You were practically convulsing. I was about to call medical bay.” Herman eased Newton up carefully, one hand on his chest and one remaining on the back of his neck, pushing him back to rest against the desk.

Newton put his head in his hands, groaning deeply. “I was having a dream, Hermann. I’ll be fine in a second.”

Although Newt still had his head in his hands, he could see Hermann’s look of disbelief. “I seriously doubt that, Newton. Normal dreams don’t make people convulse. Have these been occurring on a regular basis?”

Newton waved his hand vaguely, getting to his feet slowly. “Everyone has dreams. Don’t worry about it.” He leaned to pick up the scattered papers he had dropped during his dream.

Hermann made a noise of consternation behind him. “I am worrying about it, Doctor Geiszler. It’s a very disruptive-”

Newton dropped his papers with a loud crash onto his desk, cutting Hermann off. “Why do you worry about it, Hermann? Why is it a problem that I am clearly losing my mind slowly? What’s the number one issue with it, Doctor Gottlieb?” He said, stressing the name sarcastically, and turning to face him.

Hermann looked taken aback. “I- well, it’s clearly not healthy for you. Ignoring these problems isn’t very good for your work.”

“My work.” Newton stated flatly. “I thought you saw my work as a bunch of ‘sensationalistic, imperfect drivel’. Since when do you care about my work?”

Hermann was looking increasingly lost. “Well, I personally find it less involving than pure mathematics, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t play an important role in saving the world.”

“I thought it was us who played an important part in saving the world.” Newton said this last part softly, watching Hermann’s face change into a more schooled expression once he got what Newton was going for.

“Now, Newton, don’t be so melodramatic. I really don’t think this is the time to talk about this.”

Newton threw his hands up in the air. “When is it the right time to talk about this? I mean, we drifted together, which we both know is one of the most personal things you can do with another person! We haven’t once alluded to it at all, and you think the right course is to just argue with each other just as much as before. I mean, fuck, Hermann, how hard is it for you to admit that you care about me as a person? I mean, we know each other’s deepest, darkest secrets, we’ve worked together for ten years now, but you can barely call me by my first name. Now, I know you’ve been hurt before, but how long is it going to take for you to open up for another person?”

Hermann’s mouth opened and closed silently. He looked at a loss for words.

After a moment of silence, Newton nodded. “I’m going for a walk.” He grabbed his jacket and ID and headed for the door. Hermann stood and listened to his footsteps echo all the way down the hallway until the elevator came to carry him upwards.

Hermann felt a twinge in his leg, and sat down hastily in the closest chair available, which happened to be Newt’s desk chair. Various petri dishes, academic papers, and small kaiju action figures littered his desk, the larger ones holding down the big piles.

Hermann knew this would happen sooner or later. When people got to know him over long periods of time, eventually they grew to expect some kind of acknowledgement of their relationship. When it became apparent to them that he was unable to reciprocate, they left. It had happened with Vanessa, and now it was happening with Newton. Besides his parents, the two of them were the only ones who had known him long enough to expect something from him. Vanessa was eventually fed up, and she had left, albeit on mutual terms. However, true to form, Newton Geiszler would not give up so quietly or so gracefully.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tendo leaned back in his chair, allowing the soft sounds of his assistants (‘unpaid lab-monkeys’, as Alison liked to call them whenever she visited the Shatterdome) typing on the computers surround him. The amount of help he got from the interns was incredible, and without the threat of global destruction hanging over his head, Tendo found himself with much more free time than even he knew what to do with.

Following Mako’s earlier comment about looking for Harmon the old-fashioned way, he tried to take a look into the man’s past. As he said earlier to Mako, he had a minimal web presence, but some things were just impossible to get rid of. Some of these things were early adolescence records.

Looking into these earlier records, Tendo found out some interesting things, such as the fact that Michael Harmon used to be a ward of the state. He grew up in an orphanage in Atlanta, but once he turned 18, his presence disappeared from national records. His reappearance came a few years later soon after the first Kaiju attacks. By then, he was working for PM Webb Corp, a company that didn’t seem to do anything at all.

Just as Tendo was about to give up on his mediocre research efforts, he spotted a picture that was attached to a news article about a public image fundraiser. The picture was of a panel of Nobel-winning scientists, but in the background of the picture was Michael Harmon shaking hands with Charles Gaiman, one of the first scientists to work on the Jaeger program. Standing next to Harmon was a Chinese woman, and the three of them were deep in conversation.

Tendo wondered what Michael Harmon was doing chatting with a famous scientist who worked with the international Jaeger program. It seemed that Harmon had been connected to the government workings of the anti-Kaiju force for many years. He had connections, but now from his recent actions it seemed that official avenues of information had dried up. Harmon was now forced to look for help from Chau and other unsavory individuals.

Tendo emerged from his computer station to tell Marshall Hansen what he had found when he encountered a stream of people running towards the labs downstairs. Mako and Raleigh were in the group, and he grabbed Raleigh’s arm.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“There was a break-in in the labs downstairs. They broke through and stole a bunch of supplies. Might be the same people that attacked Chau’s place yesterday.” Raleigh answered, pulling Tendo with him down the hall.

When the three of them got down to the lower levels, there was already a huge group of people, including the Marshall, standing outside of the labs.

Hermann was standing against a wall, waving his cane in anger and pointing emphatically at Herc.

“Now, I really thought this place was a military establishment! What kind of place is it if hoodlums can just break in and take anything they want? This is an outrage. Mine and Newton’s lab is trashed!” Hermann’s face was red, but Tendo could sense the underlying fear in his outrage. Unlike the Jaeger pilots, the scientists and technicians like Tendo were not used to dealing with bodily danger, especially from other people.

Herc tried to calm Hermann down and pressed him for details. “We’ve locked the place down, but I think they’ve made it out already. They aren’t showing their faces at least, if they’re still here. I think Dr. Geiszler was right, though. Something fishy is going on. It could get real dangerous real fast, and we need to be on top of it. Becket, Mori, with me. We need to take a look around the lab and see if they left anything behind. Choi, come here too. You’re more methodical than anyone else around here. Everyone else, get back to work”

The five of them entered the trashed lab, and Tendo let out a gasp. The few times he had been down here, the lab had looked like a before and after picture of a home makeover, Hermann’s side of the lab spotless and Newton’s littered with Kaiju bits and random assortments of scientific equipment. Now, the whole lab looked awful, papers strewn all over. Hermann’s blackboard had been knocked over, a long string of equations mostly erased and Newt’s specimens were knocked onto the ground.

Hermann tried to pick up a few papers, looking incredibly upset. “How am I supposed to find anything in this place anymore?” He looked over at Newton’s side of the lab. His face clouded and he hobbled over quickly, clutching his leg carefully. “They took some of Newton’s samples. There used to be a cuticle from Otachi here, almost perfectly preserved. It was the least decayed of all of Newton’s samples. It’s gone. Newton had so few samples to work with. I can recreate equations. There aren’t any new Kaijus for Newton to study.” He clutched the side of the table and watched the other four pick through the rubble.

He glanced down at the watch on his wrist and then back at the clock on the wall. “Speaking of Newton, he has been gone for hours. He’s not usually gone for so long, he should have made it back by now. He needs to know about the lab.” Hermann looked around at everyone, but nobody knew what to say.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newt crossed his arms against the chill coming off of the ocean waterfront. His leather jacket wasn’t exactly functional, and at times like this he wished he had just cashed in for a warmer, ridiculous-looking jacket like the one Hermann had.

The entrance to the Shatterdome nearest to the labs was the least manned, and Newt liked to use that when coming back from Hong Kong, because it didn’t take so long to get past security. When he came within sight of the Shatterdome, he noticed that the warning lights were pulsing on top of the walls. The only times those lights were on was when there was an emergency. It can’t have been a Kaiju attack, because even if the Breach were open, the city’s sirens would have gone off already, so it must be an internal problem. Newton ran forward to reach the Shatterdome.

Once he got within a block, he came across a group of men loading a few things into the back of a van. With a start, Newt noticed that one of the containers was his container from the lab, and they were taking it with them.

“Hey!” he shouted, running forward without thinking. One of the men pointed a gun at Newt first thing, motioning him to back off and Newt stopped running. The man standing behind him glanced over and then pulled a picture out of his front pocket comparing it with Newton. He whispered something in the ear of the man holding the gun. His eyebrows rose and he considered Newt again.

Newt, figuring out what the next step would be, turned around and ran for the main motorway as fast as his legs could carry him. As he heard the fast approaching footsteps behind him, the only thing he could think was how ridiculous it was that this was happening to him again in the same week.

Newt reached the main road with a gasp, but he felt someone grab his right arm. He turned around and used his momentum to punch the man with his left hand. The man reared back, holding his nose, but there were two others. One grabbed him underneath the arms and dragged him back toward the van. Newt struggled and shouted, kicking one of the men in the shin. With great difficulty, they wrestled him into the van, and Newt felt someone grab his legs.

“Get off me!” Newt screamed as the door to the van slammed shut and the van pulled out into the road. Newton’s face was pushed into the seat, and someone pulled his arms behind his back and bound them tightly. The same was done to his ankles, and he twisted around, kicking the man again to no effect. As he turned around, his glasses were knocked off his face and they fell to the floor of the cab. Suddenly everything was a blur as duct tape was placed across his mouth, and they pushed him into the back of the cab.

He stopped struggling as soon as he saw that it was getting him nowhere. Newton tried to squint, but everything around him was blurry and indistinct. He heard one of the men give a call to a superior, and then there was no sound but the soft clink of Newt’s specimens and the muffled noises of Hong Kong as they passed by.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raleigh could tell the Marshall was angry. It was sometimes hard to tell, because he was Australian and always seemed angry, but now he had the intense gravitas that Marshall Pentecost had mastered in his day.

“How is it,” he asked the assembled officers in his presence, who all looked terrified, “that a group of men could just come in here to a military facility and steal important specimens and nobody noticed? Dr. Gottlieb is the only who did notice, and he’s not paid to keep the building safe.”

Nobody said anything, and with a look of disgust, Herc waved off all his officers. They scattered like they couldn’t escape fast enough. Herc walked with Raleigh back down towards the lab where Mako was helping Hermann pick up pieces of their lab.

Hermann was walking back and forth across the lab, picking up papers that had scattered everywhere, his cane hitting the ground with force. He was walking so fast he looked out of balance, his bad leg quivering visibly. Mako walked closer to him and softly asked whether she could carry some papers for him, but he waved her off.

“I appreciate the help, Miss Mori, but I know where everything goes. I have to do this myself.”

Herc stepped forward, trying to interrupt Hermann’s frenzied movement. “Hermann. Can you tell us exactly what is missing besides the Kaiju cuticle? Is there anything irreplaceable that’s been taken?”

Hermann stopped walking and considered the rest of the room. “My things seem only to be scattered. You would need to ask Newton what exactly of his is missing. His system of organization is something nobody but him could understand.”

“Maybe there’s some kind of inventory here somewhere.” Raleigh chimed in. “In theory, he should have been completing paperwork of some kind. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find it.”

Everyone looked around, not looking forward to sifting through Newton’s system of organization when Tendo came running in at speed, clutching a laptop to his chest.

“What is it, Mr. Choi?” Herc asked Tendo. He had sent Tendo and his team searching through the base’s security footage for some kind of information they could use.

He stopped running, taking a moment to catch his breath. “Well, sir, I have some good news and some really bad news.” Tendo opened the laptop and everyone crowded around him to see the screen. “The good news is that we caught these guys on camera when they entered.” He fast-forwarded through some footage of three men breaking in through a service entrance and taking the stairs down to the science section of the Shatterdome. At various points, the cameras caught clear footage of the men’s faces.

“We can put these through facial recognition software, and maybe we can find out who they are. My guess is that they have criminal records. Guys like this usually do. We should get on that immediately.” Tendo said.

Herc nodded. “I’ll call someone who can get me access to those databases. What is the bad news, Mr. Choi?”

Tendo stopped scrolling through the footage and looked over at Hermann for a moment. “I checked the security footage from the outside of the building just in case I could see where they went after they left the Shatterdome. I did catch them leaving but the cameras also caught this.” He turned on the footage. The camera was aimed at the street where the three men were loading the items they had stolen into a van. From the direction of the street came a figure toward the Shatterdome. They were too far away to see clearly until they came level with the van. Raleigh then recognized Newt from his huge glasses. Everyone was silent as they watched Newt turn tail and run for the street, then be dragged back and forced into the van kicking and screaming. The van door slammed shut and the van pulled out of the street, turning right and out of frame.

Nobody said anything, and Raleigh glanced over at Hermann. His face was grey and he stared at the computer screen like there might be some more footage than what there was. He looked as if a bus had crashed into him at full speed. Although Raleigh had never been in Newt and Hermann’s presence when they were not arguing, it was clear that they cared about each other. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have been drift compatible, and Raleigh knew better than anyone how it felt to lose your drift partner.

Hermann’s hand that was supporting him with his cane was shaking badly, and he sunk onto the nearest footstool.

“These men must work for Michael Harmon. They tried to steal things from Hannibal Chau and now from us. I think Newton was right about this man.” Mako said softly, crossing her arms over her chest.

“It’s a little difficult to find a man who doesn’t really exist.” Tendo said, running his hands over his face in exhaustion.

“We need to run searches on those databases as soon as possible. Mr. Choi, come with me. You understand all this technology better than I do.” Herc and Tendo walked out, and Mako and Raleigh stayed behind with Hermann, who still hadn’t said anything.

He was looking over at Newt’s side of the lab, still strewn with debris. He picked up one of Newt’s childish Kaiju bobbleheads off of the ground and placed it on the desk where it bobbed silently. Hermann always seemed to be in his element when he was in the lab amongst numbers and papers, but this was the most vulnerable he had ever seen Hermann. His shoulders were bowed and he rubbed his bad leg absently.

“The only reason he was out there was because we were arguing. If I hadn’t antagonized him, he wouldn’t have been out there on his own.” Hermann said finally, looking at the trashed lab.

“No offense, doc, but you guys are always fighting. You can’t blame yourself for something like this.” Raleigh said.

Hermann looked miserable. “If you two wouldn’t mind, I would much like to be alone now. I have a lot of cleaning up to do.”

Mako inclined her head and pulled Raleigh out the door. Raleigh drummed restlessly on the wall near the elevator as they waited. “I just feel so useless, Mako. I wish there was something we could be doing right now.”

Mako smiled. “That’s the Jaeger pilot in you. Let’s hope Tendo turns something up in his search.”

Raleigh sighed. “Newt’s an obnoxious little guy, but I’m worried about him.”

“Me too.” Mako put her arm around Raleigh’s waist and rested her head on his arm.


	4. Alaska or Bust

The van pulled to a stop and they grabbed Newt’s feet, pulling him out of the van. Newt felt himself slung over someone’s shoulder and carried toward a building. Twisting his head around, Newt tried to see what was going on around him. He could smell the salty, fishy smell coming off the ocean so they were still somewhere near the waterfront, but other than that, the vague shapes of buildings were all he could see.

A door opened and they entered into a large building. The men’s footsteps echoed, so the building was in a big open space. Newt looked to the left. Although everything was blurry and sideways, he could still make out the general shape of some kind of machinery taking up the space. Before he could discern anything else, they entered another door and went down another hallway. A final door was opened and he was tossed into the room unceremoniously.

Newt hit the ground with a muffled grunt, his forehead hitting the wall. He was dazed for a few moments as the door behind him was closed and locked. He only realized as the door was closed that there was no light in this room, and that he was essentially locked in a closet. At least now his lack of glasses wouldn’t be a problem, he thought as he maneuvered himself into a sitting position, his back resting against the wall.

Up until this point, Newt had been so focused on figuring out where he was that he hadn’t stopped to consider how fucked he was. Now that there was nothing to but wait, Newt was worried about what these people wanted with him. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that these guys were connected with the suit from the other day, but whether they wanted his technical expertise or something else he didn’t know.

After an interminable wait, a bright light burst into the room as the door opened and Newt winced, narrowing his eyes against the light. A man walked into the room and kneeled down next to Newton. He could see a vaguely person-shaped mass in front of him with hair and a face, but he couldn’t discern anything else about the man before he spoke.

“I expect you’ll be wanting these back.” Michael Harmon said, leaning over and putting Newt’s glasses back on. Everything became clear, and Newt sighed in relief. He was never so aware of how much he depended on his glasses until he was without them. Harmon reached across and ripped the tape off of Newt’s mouth, and he breathed in deep. It had been getting hard to breathe with the gag.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Newt asked as Harmon reached behind him and pulled one of Newt’s sleeves up, exposing his extensive tattooing.

“Just making sure you are who you say you are. These must have taken quite a while to have done. Years, even. An unorthodox choice, to be sure.”

Newt shifted away from him. “What am I doing here? If you want to know about the Kaiju, that shit’s classified, and I won’t tell you anything.”

Harmon smiled thinly and pushed Newton’s sleeve back down. “You don’t have any information that I haven’t gathered from other sources. It turns out some people are fascinated by you, however. That makes you useful to me.”

Newt didn’t like the sound of that. “What people?”

Michael Harmon didn’t answer him, just smiled again and stood up, locking the door as he left, plunging Newt into darkness again.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harmon left the small hallway behind and entered the large space where all their equipment and Kaiju inventory was left. Heng Guo was already waiting for him, checking her email on her tablet. At the sound of his footsteps, she raised her gaze and clicked the tablet off.

“Well? Do we have everything we need?” Her clipped tone underlied her impatience at how long it was taking to get their contacts to cooperate. Michael felt the same urgency. Garnering the support of the Cult had been massively more difficult than they had anticipated, but he finally felt they had a big enough playing piece to get what they needed.

“Let’s go upstairs.” The two of them reached the second floor of this warehouse, which had been outfitted to look like a real office building, with conference rooms lining the corridor. In the last conference room on the left waited their connections with the Cult of the Kaiju, a man and a woman who were the second and third in command and had been sent as emissaries. 

Heng and Michael entered and sat across from them. The man, an Italian, Pietro Adami was adjusting his cuff links while the woman, Natasha Brennan was waiting without moving for them. There was something unnerving about the two of them in the way they carried themselves, like they had a purpose. Both of them had an uncomfortable tendency of maintaining too much eye contact during a conversation, which forced you to either look away or keep looking at them throughout an entire discussion. Every Cult member Harmon had encountered had acted like this, and he didn’t know whether it came with the territory, or whether they were instructed to act as unnerving as possible.

“Ciaran sent us to treat with you. He says that he appreciates the partnership you have maintained, but also wants you to know he has no further interest in continuing it. You no longer have anything to offer us, and we would prefer to continue in peace.” Natasha Brennan was the one who broke the silence, her face impassive.

Heng took up the thread. “We appreciate your position, however, we feel we can bring something to the table that will be sufficient for Ciaran to give us what we want. It will be an arrangement beneficial for both parties.”

Both Natasha and Pietro looked unmoved by Heng’s statement. “Your information was very helpful, and we thank you for providing it, but we will not release any of our Kaiju remains for more information. They are too sacred and too limited.”

Michael smiled. “I believe we have something that will change your mind. Admittedly, I am not well versed in your.. beliefs, but you are aware of the PPDC scientist who drifted with the Kaiju hive mind, correct?”

For the first time in this conversation, Pietro and Natasha’s faces shifted into something more reverential. “We are aware of Newton Geiszler. We have wanted to make contact with him for quite awhile.”

“We can do you one better. Newton Geiszler is in the building, and we can give him to you, provided Ciaran consents to providing us with more supplies.” Michael added, hoping that this was the correct gambit to gain their support.

“You have him? Here?” Pietro asked, leaning forward across the table, eyes alight.

Michael smiled, knowing he had them on the hook now. “I do. You may verify his identity for yourselves if you’d like, and, if Ciaran consents to what we need, you can take him with you. Today.”

Natasha and Pietro turned to each other and had a short whispered discussion. Pietro stepped outside for a short phone call, and then came back.

“Yes,” he said immediately when he walked in the door. “Ciaran will get you what you need. We will be back in a few hours. We need to make preparations.”

Two hours later, Natasha and Pietro met Heng and Michael downstairs with two more men and a briefcase. Michael gestured toward the back and his men dragged out Newt. They had cut the bonds around his feet so he could walk with them over to the center of the space.

Natasha frowned. “He is injured.” The cut on Newt’s forehead which had been stitched up a few days ago was bleeding slightly from being tossed into the wall. Her and Pietro walked up to Newt, who shied away but was held back. They looked fascinated with Newton, looking closely at the edges of the tattoos that poked out from the edges of his shirt.

“This is him.” Natasha said, and Pietro nodded.

Newt was looking more and more concerned. “Look, guys, I know I’m hot shit and all, but could you tell me what is going on? Who are you people?”

Ignoring him, Natasha turned and placed the briefcase into Michael’s hands. “The rest of the payment will be sent as soon as we make it back to Alaska.”

“Alaska?” Newt asked, sounding panicked.

One of the men they had brought with them came forward holding a syringe.

“What the fuck, dude!” Newt shouted, trying to pull away from the men holding him by the arms. He was unsuccessful, and the man grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, exposing his neck. He plunged the syringe into his neck and depressed the plunger. Newt’s shouts and struggles slowed and then stopped, and he grew limp, passing out.

The cult’s men took the prone Newt and carried him out the door. Pietro and Natasha nodded at Michael and Heng, and then left by the door to their waiting vehicle.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermann slammed a textbook down on his desk so hard it jarred his arm. That was the last of his things he needed to pick up off the ground. His papers were organized again, the books in a row on his desk. With great difficulty, he had managed to right the blackboard, although there was still a huge blank spot through the long equations where something had brushed against it.

Newton’s side of the lab was still a mess, and although that was hardly different than normal, Hermann could see some things that were not right. Besides the missing specimens, the paperwork that had been precariously balanced on Newton’s desk was now scattered on the floor.

Hermann clutched his cane and pulled himself to his feet. Logically, he knew that there was nothing he could right now for Newton. The best thing he could do right now was keep working while Tendo and Herc looked for concrete information on the men who had broken in. Hermann picked up a piece of chalk and concentrated on filling in the missing equation fragments that had been destroyed in the break-in. After only ten minutes, he laid down the chalk in frustration, rubbing his temples. He wasn’t able to concentrate, something missing from his environment that he couldn’t put his finger on. Hermann listened to the silence in the lab and realized that Newton’s obnoxious music was what was missing. Hermann had grown so accustomed to tuning the loud music out that his constant background sound was gone.

He turned around for the thousandth time to look at Newton’s empty side of the lab. Usually, there would be frenzied music pumping from Newt’s tinny speakers and Newt would be elbow-deep in dead Kaiju while shouting across the room in his high-pitched voice to tell Hermann about some inane fact about the Kaiju that he definitely didn’t want to know about. The noise was what was missing. Newton was missing.

Not being able to stand one more second in the lab by himself, Hermann abandoned his work and made his slow way up to the training bay. Until Tendo or Herc made progress on the facial recognition software, there was really nothing to be done about Newton’s disappearance. Hermann knew all of this logically, but he couldn’t help feeling like he should be actively searching. In mathematics, problems had a solution, and no longer how long it took him to solve them, eventually there was an end point. There was nothing to be done, and he felt useless.

Hermann took a seat to the side of the training bay and watched Raleigh and Mako work. They had their trainees doing bata fighting, spaced out throughout the bay. Hermann was impressed by some of the trainees, as a few of them were getting quite good. Only a week ago, he would have thought that the probability of the trainees getting a chance to actually fight was low, but in light of recent events, the usefulness of the recruits might be needed down the road.

Although they almost never left each other’s sight and appeared in unison wherever they went, Raleigh and Mako had different teaching styles. Raleigh was off on the far side of the bay supervising one pair of trainees. Every time one of the fighters landed a point, he loudly exclaimed in admiration, and then the next time the other fighter had a point, he cheered just as enthusiastically. Raleigh was a prime believer in positive reinforcement, Hermann thought wryly as he turned his attention to Mako.

Nearer to Hermann, Mako was watching another pair of fighters quite seriously. Whenever they reached a lull in their fighting, she would reach across and carefully maneuver the trainee’s hands on the bata stick so that he was in the correct position. Then, allowing the pair to continue the fight, she would nod in approval as their style improved.

As the trainees finished up and started streaming out the doors to their rooms or the cafeteria, Mako caught sight of Hermann sitting at the edge of the room.

“Dr. Gottlieb. Did you enjoy the recruits’ performances? I believe they are getting quite good.” she said, giving him a small smile.

Hermann nodded seriously. “They have improved monumentally from the last time I observed them.” The last time he had seen the recruits train was with Newt because he wanted to “see the new blood” in action. Newton had stood on the side and cheered whenever anyone made a hit and discussed who his favorite candidates were to Hermann, who was largely unimpressed both with the recruits and Newton’s behavior. He shook his head, trying to get that memory out of his mind. He had come up here to forget Newton.

Mako, sensing his discomfort, put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “How about you come with me and Raleigh up to see Tendo after we finish picking up?”

Hermann nodded, and the three of them made their way up to the control station looking over the operations bay. They entered the room to the sight of Tendo kneeling on the back of the chair and directing at least three different trains of action. He looked like a conductor, the tallest thing in the room, pointing at one group of people and issuing some orders, then turning to another group working on a completely different project. His rosary flew and wrapped around his hand as he gesticulated at his employees, and behind him ran three different computers. One seemed to be security camera footage, the other was a computer-created diagram of the Breach, and the last was running a line of code under its own volition.

When he caught sight of Raleigh, Mako, and Hermann, he waved them over, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.

“I was just about to call you guys. I set the footage running through the databases, and it’s been running all night. It finally came back with some results.”

The three of them gathered around his first computer, and he pulled up a few different windows with files projected on them. “Like I thought, these guys have records. They’re professional criminals. See, I was wondering whether they have some kind of modus operandi, but they’re seemingly involved in all kinds of shady stuff. Danny Spencer, Ben Chase, and Jacob Henson are their names, and they’ve apparently robbed banks, broken into military facilities, even murdered a few people for money.” Everyone looked uncomfortable at that implication, and he quickly moved on. “We know who these guys are and I might even know where they are.”

Tendo pulled up another window which had a grainy picture of a parking lot. There were a variety of vehicles parked around a small squat building somewhere in Hong Kong.

The three of them looked confused. “Why do we care about this parking lot again?” Raleigh asked.

“Because of this.” Tendo pointed at one of the vans, parked at the very edge of the parking lot near the street. “Look familiar?” It was the van that the three men had been driving near the Shatterdome.

Hermann was astounded. “How did you find the van? It could have been anywhere.”

Tendo smiled, leaning back a little bit. He always loved explaining his expertise. “Well, the cameras outside the Shatterdome got a really great shot of the license plate for the car. Luckily, we’ve got connections here, so I called and found out who owned the car. Turns out, a man named Gang Syun owns all of these. He rents them out to people for cash. At least, that’s his official business, although Hong Kong authorities are pretty sure he has some other business on the side. But, this is his actual business, and so I figured our guys have got to be around here somewhere. Guess what Syun also owns?”

He dragged the image of the parking lot sideways to reveal a long, low building across the street.

“A motel,” Mako said, surprised.

“Exactly.” Tendo grinned. “Now how much do you wanna bet that these guys found their van from the place where they were staying? Seems pretty logical. These guys are in town for a job, staying at a crappy motel. They need a van, take a look across the street, hire one. My best guess for finding these guys would be this place.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Should we just start knocking down doors, or…?” Raleigh thought out loud as he, Mako, and Hermann stood a block down from the motel. They stood in an alcove of a butcher shop while people streamed around them. Luckily, this was a busy section of Hong Kong and they didn’t need to worry about being spotted by anyone up ahead.

“I don’t think they will tell us who is staying here. Our only option is to ask everyone.” Mako said.

Raleigh glanced over at Hermann, who was leaning on his cane and looking out of his depth. “You know, Hermann, I really think you should have stayed behind. There’s a lot of walking on this trip, and I don’t think your leg is up to it. Besides, what if this gets ugly?”

Hermann gave Raleigh an annoyed look. “I will stay out of the way of any trouble that springs up, Mr. Becket. As for my leg, I have been dealing with it for years. Don’t worry about me.” He looked determined to be present, and so Raleigh let it go.

The three of them made their way into the middle of the motel. Starting on the first level, they walked around knocking on doors. Mako took one end, Raleigh the other, and they worked toward each other. The rooms were either unoccupied, or the annoyed person who answered was not who they were looking for.

Meeting in the middle, Raleigh and Mako sighed. “Let’s try the second level now.” Mako said, but then she saw Hermann looking intently at the far end of the parking lot. She turned her attention over there, and saw with surprise two of the three men they were looking for were loading suitcases into a small car.

Before Raleigh or Mako made a move, Hermann started walking quickly toward them. The other two caught up, and as they drew level with the men, they looked up in suspicion. No look of recognition crossed their faces, so it seemed they were not aware of who they were.

One of the men, Danny Spencer, frowned and was about to ask them what they were doing there when Hermann stopped walking and pointed his cane at him.

“Where is he?” Hermann asked angrily. Although Hermann was at least a foot shorter and less muscled than Spencer, the man was significantly put off by Hermann’s anger that he took half a step back.

“Where is who?” he asked, regaining his composure.

Hermann scoffed. “Newton Geiszler. The man you kidnapped yesterday. Where is he?”

Realizing why Hermann was there, the man smirked and pushed Hermann aside, heading for the car. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He started to get into his car when Raleigh stepped in front of him. Mako stepped in front of the other man, blocking them from their car.

“Our security footage begs to differ.” Raleigh said, narrowing his eyes. “Now I suggest you tell us where he is before we turn in that footage to the authorities.”

Spencer laughed. “You think we care about the authorities? I’ve been in and out of prison more times than you can count. You know what? It’s not even worth having this argument. We don’t have him.”

Mako stepped forward. “Yes, you do, we saw-”

“We had him, we don’t have him. Present tense. We were just hired to steal some Kaiju specimens and grab Geiszler if we came across him. We did that, now we’re done. Who knows where he is now.” Spencer threw the last suitcase in his backseat while the third man in the group came down from the motel.

Hermann frowned. “We know who hired you. Michael Harmon. We’re not leaving until you tell us where to find him.”

“You might not be leaving, but we are.” Spencer added as he pushed past Raleigh to get to the car. His companion did the same. Raleigh grabbed his arm to stop him but the man lashed out and punched Raleigh in the stomach. Raleigh crumpled. Mako stepped forward and twisted the other man’s arm behind his back, but she was outnumbered, and the third man grabbed her and shoved her to the ground.

Just as Mako and Raleigh were getting to their feet, the three men were already in the car and pulling out of the parking lot. In dismay, Hermann watched their last lead drive away. Without the men he had hired, there was no way to find Michael Harmon. They’d hit a dead end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was kind of a slow chapter, sorry about that. I had to get some things out of the way so the plot could move forward. The next chapter will be coming soon, and it'll be longer and more exciting to make up for this short one. Also a big thank you to everyone who have left kudos and commented! You're all stars.


	5. Criminal on Criminal

“Sir, there’s a very angry man in goggles standing outside, and he says he’s not leaving until he talks to the superior officer here.” A nervous guard walked up to Marshall Hansen as he stood on the tech deck checking off paperwork.

Herc looked up. “Did he really say superior officer?”

The man shifted uncomfortably. “There might have been more expletives used.”

Herc was amused. “Normally I would commend not letting in a mob boss to the Shatterdome, but Chau is probably here to give us some information we need. Let him in.”

The guard walked off to let Hannibal in and a few minutes Hannibal Chau came sauntering onto deck. He was the first person to not look impressed by their first visit to the operations deck. He was trailed by two associates, a bald woman and another stoic man with sleeve tattoos. Tendo wasn’t sure because of his dark goggles, but he thought Hannibal was taking a surreptitious look at all their equipment before walking straight up to Hansen.

“Listen, before we get chatting about the outback or whatever it is you Australians like to talk about, I’m here for one thing and one thing only. I have an address for you. You can do what you like with it.” Hannibal shot off rapid-fire, holding a slip of paper between his fingers like a cigarette.

Herc quirked an eyebrow. “And what is this address for?”

“By now I think you know I have connections. This is where that asshole Michael Harmon was stationed as of yesterday. I made some calls.”

Herc took the piece of paper, looking surprised. “Why would you give us this address? What do you get out of it?”

“Someone steals from me, they’ve got to pay. His attack’s got to have consequences, but I don’t have the time or manpower to go chasing after everyone who doesn’t like me. Now you, you’ve got time on your hands. Now that the Kaiju are gone, are you going to go after Komodo dragons that’ve pissed you off? Garden lizards? Might as well spend your time doing something useful.”

“Maybe after hunting down Harmon, my obsolete organization will set its sights on you, Chau. We’ve got enough dirt on you these past couple years.” Herc said, annoyed.

Hannibal considered Herc and smiled, showing square teeth. “I’ll see you then, Hansen.”

Hannibal and his silent companions left the control deck, and Herc unfolded the paper. An address on the waterfront section of Hong Kong was scrawled there along with a curt Harmon above it.

Seeing Tendo was watching the exchange, Herc came over to him and showed him the paper. “What do you think? Can we trust Chau?”

“I think the day we trust Hannibal Chau is the day we should pack it in, sir. But, we might as well check this address out. It’s not like we’re drowning in leads or anything.” Tendo ran the address quickly, bringing up an aerial map of the area. “Looks like some kind of warehouse. Could be promising.”

“Could be a trap.” Herc said, his Australian accent sounding strongly. He huffed. “Chau might be a criminal, but he’s right about some things. We do have some time on our hands. The biggest possible threat is coming from this Harmon character, and the sooner we find Dr. Geiszler the better.”

“Should we send out a team?” Tendo asked, already planning a route to the address.

Herc considered for a moment. “No. I’m sure Mori and Becket will want to head this operation. They can bring a few of their recruits with them. Some practical experience might be good for them. I’ll go with as well.”

Tendo frowned. “Is that wise, sir?”

“I may be a Marshall now, but I still feel like a Jaeger pilot. If I have to sit through one more conference call about the Shatterdome’s financial situation, I might just take a Jaeger out to the Breach myself. I don’t think I was made to run this place.” Herc said. “I’m going.”

True to his word, that evening, Herc, Mako, Raleigh, and a small group of volunteers pulled up to the outside of the building. They were a few blocks away, and Mako took a look at the building first for any sign of movement. After nearly ten minutes with nobody going in or out, she turned to Herc.

“I cannot tell whether there are people in there. We should go now.”

Herc nodded, and their small group walked up. They came at the building sideways in case someone was watching the front. When there was still no movement, Herc went first towards the front of the building. He grasped the handle and when it turned, he opened the door a few inches. When no stream of guards or gunfire followed the door’s opening, he stepped fully inside the building, followed by everyone else.

After a short hallway, the building opened into a huge open space. There were stairs off to the side and a small hallway, but the majority of the space was empty. There were large, hulking shapes covered in plastic sheeting taking up some of the floor space. Herc sent some of the volunteers to check the upstairs and the side hallway while he, Mako, and Raleigh examined the machinery.

Raleigh exhaled in surprise when he pulled off the sheeting on the closest machine. “This is a PONS system.” he shouted to Mako and Herc. “It’s a very early version. Looks obsolete, but I don’t know how they got their hands on something like this.”

Herc checked under more sheeting, revealing obsolete machinery from the Jaeger program. “This stuff’s gathering dust. I don’t think they’re using any of this. Maybe they got access to some newer designs.”

“There are so many bases that were abandoned when the Coastal Wall program was funded. It’s possible that some of the old equipment got sold off then.” Raleigh mused.

Mako was looking down at the ground where there were scuff marks and outlines in the dust of the floor. “There used to be more equipment here,” she shouted. “It looks like it was moved. Really recently.” She ran a finger on the ground in the space. There was no dust on her finger.

“You mean they moved shop in the past day?” Raleigh said, looking disappointed. “We were so close.”

Slowly, the volunteers streamed back from the rest of the building. “There’s nobody here, sir.” One of the trainees told Herc.

Herc was about to call off the search when Raleigh called their attention from the far side of the room. “I think you guys should have a look at this. There are piles of diagrams on the desk here.”

Mako and Herc came and took a look at them, throwing piles of paper aside. Herc huffed. “The last time I paid attention to science was in secondary school. We’ll have to bring some of these to Gottlieb, see what he has to make of it.”

Mako was looking intently at a large diagram, the inside pulled out . “I may not understand all the details, but this diagram appears to be for some kind of machinery. But, the machinery involves reading Kaiju DNA signatures.” The blue diagram indeed showed a small double helix as well as a small cartoon representation of a Kaiju above of complicated schematics.

“Why would anyone need to read Kaiju DNA signatures? You don’t need a whole machine like this to test their DNA. That can be done the regular way.” Raleigh asked. Although they didn’t have as much scientific knowledge as the science division of PPDC, everyone had received a crash course in Kaiju biology along the way.

“What if the machinery is needed to read Kaiju DNA in the same way that the Breach used DNA to block entrance between our world and theirs?” Mako said softly. Up until this point, the possibility of reopening the Breach had been a theory, but this diagram brought the theory uncomfortably close to proof.

Herc shook his head. “I don’t think we should jump to conclusions. Let’s take these to the actual experts before deciding what it means. We could be reading these completely wrong.”

Nobody looked convinced by this line of reasoning, but they pocketed the diagrams in any case. Right as they finished, the last of the trainees returned from the rest of the building, shaking their heads.

“They must have taken Newt with them when they left.” Raleigh said, sounding dejected.

Mako looked worried. “I feel like we’re just chasing lead to lead and getting nowhere. Every step we take leads to something worse than the one before. Newton could be anywhere by now.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing Newt noticed when he awoke was the cold. He opened his eyes, not processing what was going on around him. He was _freezing_ , breath coming out in short gasps. There was a dark stone ceiling above him, the light coming from a glass bulb embedded in the wall high above.

Newt sat up, wrapping his arms around himself. He was alone, sitting on a hard bed in a small room. Besides the bed and the glass bulb, the room was empty of furnishings. Newt thought that the place was silent, but then noticed a roaring background hum, like the sound of ocean waves through feet of concrete.

There was a small metal door set into the wall, and, crossing his fingers, Newt stood up and tried the handle. It was locked, the knob making a rattling sound but not budging.

Newt rubbed his head, trying to remember all the events of the past few days. His everpresent headache that seemed to ebb and flow was at high tide now, every sharp movement he made sending a sharp pain through his head. For a good thirty seconds, Newt couldn’t remember anything that had happened for weeks before. His mind was at a standstill, every thought pushed back by the distant sound of waves. He could remember the ocean, home, and a space between.

Shaking his head, the headache pang brought him back to reality, and he remembered Michael Harmon, the men he had hired, and the strange people who showed up at the warehouse. Newt looked nervously at the locked door. He knew that sooner or later someone would come through it, and he preferred that it happened later.

He was starting to shiver again, and pulled the sleeves of his leather jacket down his arms as far as they would stretch, rubbing his arms in an attempt to generate heat. This attempt was unsuccessful, and he was starting to think about making use of the thin blanket on the bed when noises joined the low background hum.

There were footsteps coming down the hallway outside, and Newt tensed, standing up to face whoever came through the door. He considered standing behind the door and running out before they could catch him, but considering his recent track record with escape attempts, he decided not to try it.

The knob turned, and three people stepped into the room. For a moment, Newt wasn’t sure what he was seeing. One of them was the strange man from the warehouse, but although he had been dressed in regular clothes, jeans and a sweatshirt then, now he was garbed head to toe in dark blue robes. The two people flanking him were similarly dressed, dark paint running down their faces, making them look elongated and inhuman.

Their eyes were dark, and they watched him in silence. Newt took a step backward, hitting the wall behind him. One of the men held his hand out and when Newt didn’t take it, the two others grabbed his arms and pulled him out of the room. Newt dug his heels in, but the two flanking him had at least a hundred pounds on him.

The hallway they were marching him down was dank and wet. Dark water gathered in condensation and dripped down to pool in the divots in the walls. The walls were roughly-hewn rock, muddy brown and thick. The ceiling pressed down on them, the tallest of the men had to bow his head slightly to pass through. Newt was feeling claustrophobic, breath coming in short gasps. He asked where they were going, but received no answer.

After countless twists and turns, Newt stopped trying to remember the way through. They finally emerged into a wide open space that could only be described as cathedral esque. The low ceiling and tight walls ran off and up, leaving a huge space that miraculously was still completely enclosed. There were no windows, the place lit by heavy candles. The far end was filled with stained wood pews. The front of the place was taken up by an altar with three steps leading up to a stone statue of Trespasser. Newt gaped as they dragged him up to the front of the room. The amount of detail in the stone was incredible, every scale and curve carved in loving detail.

The two men marching Newt reached the altar and twisted him around so he was facing the rest of the room. So entranced by the statue of Trespasser, Newt didn’t notice how many people were in the room. Every one of them was silent, some with hoods covering their faces and some with the paint. In the candlelight, the dark tracks looked like deep furrows in their faces, some looking almost like Kaijus.

The pews were full, the rest standing at the edges of the room. One man stood at the head of the room, dressed in long robes like the rest of them. However, instead of dark paint, his face was tracked with blue marks, the same color as Kaiju blue. They had been waiting for Newt’s arrival to begin, as the man raised his hands in supplication, as if to quiet conversations in the silent room.

“May the Precursors sustain us.” The man intoned. A low hum travelled through the hall. Every member of the room was humming deep in their throat. The sound echoed around the empty cavern. Newt shivered. He continued, a few phrases set against the monotone hum. The hum sounded dissonant, as if everyone were at a different pitch, creating a grating noise that was highly unsettling.

“Trespasser.” The man said, and the humming stopped. “Onibaba, Mutivore, Yamarashi, Leatherback, Scunner.” The congregation joined in the list of Kaiju titles. Newt looked around, seeing the reverential way the crowd repeated the names. They didn’t say the names out of fear or memorial, but out of admiration and awe. Newt felt the low thrum of panic in his chest, but tried to keep it under control.

Finally, the communal chants ended, and the sermon began. The man began speaking, although his voice was no less eerie.

“This is a crucial time. We have been threatened, persecuted. We have almost been destroyed.” A hum of agreement traveled around the room. “But I am standing here today to tell you all to have hope. Two faithful members of our congregation contacted me two days ago with a message of renewal. What was done in Hong Kong a month and a half ago can now be undone. I am here to ask you not to give in to despair. We are not lost. We have found our prophet.”

Every eye in the room turned to Newt, and he froze. The man at the head of the room was looking down at him, eyes boring right into him. Newt felt as pinned and helpless as he had when Otachi had broken into the shelter in Hong Kong.

“Even on the eve of renewal, we must remember the danger that can come from false prophets. Newton Geiszler shared consciousness with the blessed Kaiju, but he was also part of the misguided souls that separated us from our saviors. For this, he must be judged. After completion of the trials, we will bring him in front of you again. Until then, may the Precursors return soon.”

A final hum came and went, and so did the crowd. The majority of the congregation filed out a door at the far end, but the small group at the altar stayed where they were. Newt had been spellbound by the strange ceremony he had just been witness to, but now that there was movement, he found his voice.

“I don’t really know what these trials and being a prophet entails, but I don’t think I’m interested.” He said, trying to sound nonchalant, but his voice breaking and betraying his nerves. “If you’ll just point towards the way out, we can just chalk this up to a big mistake and move on with our lives.”

“The Prophet does not make the choice, the Prophet is chosen. You have been chosen.” The man said, sounding firm and unshakeable.

“The Breach is closed.” Newt said angrily. “I helped close it. I understand the pull the Kaiju can have, believe me, but they wanted to destroy the world. They wanted to kill everyone on the planet. However fascinating they might be, nothing is worth that.”

The man shook his head. “You have been corrupted by those around you. You will see things differently after undergoing the trials.”

He started to walk to the back of the cathedral and Newt tried to follow him, only to be restrained. “I’m not going to participate in your shitty plan, asshole!” Newt shouted. The man had already left the room, and couldn’t hear anything he was saying.

Newt was marched back to the same room as before, and as the door was locked behind him, Newt sunk down onto the bed and rested his head in his hands. The low background hum of the ocean meshed with the sharp throb of his headache, beating in time with his heart.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermann pushed his glasses up on top of his head. For the past couple minutes, everyone had been gathered nervously around him, waiting for his expert opinion on the sheets they had brought back from the warehouse.

He looked up at them gravely. “I don’t have any good news for you all. These schematics are for a machine to read Kaiju signatures and transmit them to another unit.”

“And what will this unit be used for?” asked Herc, hovering over Hermann’s shoulder.

Hermann pulled the sheets of paper aside, revealing another schematic. “This unit is the receiving end. I’m not an engineer, so I don’t understand entirely how this machinery will be utilized, but it comes with an encasing structure designed to withstand great pressure.”

Mako’s mouth was a thin line. “The kind of pressure that would be underneath the ocean?”

Hermann nodded.

“But we closed the Breach.” Raleigh protested, his hands clenched into fists. “Our bomb collapsed the throat. I thought that would be the end of it.”

Hermann sighed, rubbing his temples. “Unfortunately, there is still a possibility that it could be reopened. In theory, the structural weakness left from the portal could be altered mechanically. Under the natural course of events, the Breach is sealed. It hasn’t been long enough for the weakness left by the Breach to be completely scarred over. The ocean is like a healing wound.”

The room was silent while everyone digested that uncomfortable piece of news. They all sat on the control deck. Below, the last few Jaegers were being repaired. After the sealing of the Breach, the decommissioned Jaegers from the rest of the closed bases had been sent to the Shatterdome, and the tech crew set to work repairing all the extensive structural damage. Sparks flew from the closest Jaeger from Manila, scattering over the small crew climbing over the hulls. If the schematics were brought to light, everything they had been working for this past month and a half would be futile. All the people they had lost, the sacrifices they had made would be for nought.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Mako asked in a small voice.

“The transmitting device could be placed thousands of miles away. There’s no reason for it to be close to the Breach at all. If I had the signal, I might be able to locate its source’s coordinates, but we have no leads on where they could have gone.”

Tendo had been silent this entire time, looking through the rest of the bundles of paper they had brought with them. “I wouldn’t say that. If you look at the blueprint for the receiving device, it has the initials M.H. in the corner, right? Along with H.G. I bet you M.H. is Michael Harmon. H.G. could be anyone.”

After this line of reasoning seemed to make sense, Tendo continued. “Well, on the transmitting device, there are the initials C.F. I was looking at the rest. There’s a check stub here made out from Michael Harmon to Ciaran Flood.”

Raleigh nodded. “So find Ciaran Flood, find the transmitting device.”

Herc had a strange look on his face. “I know who that is.”

As everyone looked at him in expectation, he pushed aside Tendo from the computer and pulled up a login screen and typed in his credentials.

“If I find out any of you have logged into my account later, you’re all fired.” Herc grumbled as he opened his email and sifted through backlogged emails for pages. Finally, he found the page he was looking for, and opened a security briefing from LOCCENT’s research team. He scrolled down to a candid photograph of a tall, severe man with a dark beard.

“Now, most of these security briefings are wastes of everyone’s time, but as Marshall I have to sign off that I’ve read them. It’s my job to know about possible threats to the PPDC. Any intelligence gathered by international government is passed on to us when it deals with the Jaeger program or Kaiju fundamentalists.”

“Now this man, Ciaran Flood, is part of an extreme sect called the Cult of the Kaiju. Some kind of obsessive fervor was obviously going to come out of the Kaiju’s appearance, and these people are known as worshippers of the Kaiju. Some of ‘em weren’t too happy with the PPDC last month when we shut the Breach. Kind of put a damper on their plans for the apocalypse. There were some minor riots in certain places where the Cult is especially strong. There are different sects of the Cult, some more benign than others. There’s a faction here in Hong Kong, but they’re mostly the worshipping type, not the starting riots type.”

Herc stopped talking, and scrolled down the email to an attached video. He hit play, and everyone watched as an armored van drove up to a security perimeter outside of a large concrete building. A group of armed men jumped out, running down the three guards outside. The closest to the door stepped forward and fired a grenade launcher at the outer door, which destroyed both the door and the camera. The moment before the camera stopped functioning, it paused on the man’s face. They recognized Ciaran Flood from his picture.

“This happened in San Francisco three months ago. These men’s attack on the PPDC base was linked to Cult activity trying to prevent us from succeeding at closing the Breach. This man, Flood has been connected to half a dozen attacks like this on bases all around the world. Before Trespasser, Flood was a successful engineer in Dublin, but after the first round of Kaiju attacks he immersed himself in this cult.”

“If he was an engineer, he could have helped Harmon with designing the specs for these machines.” Tendo said, taking a closer look at the blueprints.

“Last known location was Sitka, Alaska.” Herc said, reading off the email.

Raleigh blanched. “That’s close to the Alaskan base. It’s been abandoned for years. Easy pickings for anyone who wants equipment. We need to go.”

Herc scoffed. “To Alaska? This is still a functioning military base, Mr. Becket. The people in this room are some of those in charge of keeping this place running. We can’t afford to send all our personnel traipsing off to Alaska at a moment’s notice.”

“With respect, sir, our most important work should be keeping the Breach closed. Right now, that means going to Alaska.”

Herc was about to retort when Hermann interrupted their argument. He had been silent up until this point.

“What would these people do to Newton?” he asked. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to him. Hermann had come across some fanatics in his day, and he knew what they were capable of. “That’s why Harmon’s men took Newton, as collateral. Imagine what he could mean to people worshipping the Kaiju. He is the only person to drift with the Kaiju hive mind, besides…” _Besides me_ , he meant to say, but the words caught in his throat.

Herc frowned. “We can’t afford to send so many of our personnel to another country on the chance that this leads nowhere. This could be a completely extraneous lead.”

Mako stepped forward, looking him in the eye. “Marshall Hansen. We can’t afford to let what Stacker and Chuck died for to be undone. We owe it to them. We owe it to everyone.”

The deep hurt that surfaced whenever anyone mentioned his son and best friend showed itself in Herc’s eyes, and he looked angry at Mako for a moment, fists clenching. He then sighed in defeat.

“I guess we’re going to Alaska.”


	6. The Ocean Far Below

He is hanging in the void. The only thing he feels is cold and unbearable pressure. Opening his eyes, he realizes he can’t breathe. Sucking in air, water rushes into his lungs and chokes him. He begins to thrash, black water holding him in place. There is nothing to see, and he can’t tell up from down. The panic in his chest bursts, and he begins to scream, the last air bubbles in his lungs released by the force.

Below him, cracks of light appear in the darkness. A beating thump, almost too low on the register to hear, surge upwards. He watches an ambiguous mass of shape and light come toward him. When it comes closer, he realizes the mass is a huge group of Kaiju, all swimming upwards toward him.

The space around him is vague and indistinct. The Kaiju below him only extended outward so far, some of them hitting the edges of the wall that enclosed the tunnel.

He tries to swim upward, but the Kaiju overtake him, brushing him aside as if he is insignificant and small. Slimy scales collide with him, pushing him this way and that. Every single Kaiju is heading up, toward the exit of the tunnel which is pulsing brighter than the rest of the Kaiju combined. They hit the top of the tunnel, carrying him with them. There is an earth-shattering thud as the first flank hits the edge of the throat. Progress is stopped, and the Kaiju growl deep in their throats. Some try to ram the edge, but legs and tentacles get tangled in the rest. They start attacking each other, claws and teeth ripping into the closest body parts.

He feels a tentacle rip into his arm, stripping away a slice of skin, and he jolts awake, screaming. This time, there is air in his lungs instead of water, and the shriek brings him back to himself. Newt stops, wrapping his arms around his knees. He is shaking uncontrollably, skin covered in a cold sweat.

He looks over at the small bedside table which is bolted to the ground. There is a small glass of water and two buttered slices of toast. Someone must have come in and left it there while he slept. Newt shivers, thinking about people coming into the room when he didn’t notice.

He gulps down the water, clearing his parched throat, but can’t bring himself to eat the toast. There are no windows or clocks in his room, but Newt is pretty sure he has been here for around two days. After that first sermon, none of the cult members came to speak to Newt. He was left alone for most of the day, the light bulb above flickering slightly.

One person had come into the room a few times, hood covering their face, and carrying a tray of food. Newt tried to engage them in conversation, but they were silent, setting the food down and leaving. They had come back twice, leading him by the arm to a small bathroom in the same hallway. Newt had considered making a break for it, but their grip on his arm was so tight he didn’t think he could break free.

The silence was the worst of it. There was nothing to do but listen to the sound of the ocean hitting the outside of the building. That was the only thing Newt knew about where he was. They were near water and it was freezing. Newt had wrapped himself in the threadbare blanket they had left him, but it did nothing to keep the cold at bay.

Newt knew what Hermann would say if he were here right now. _Newton, if you weren’t so focused on looking like a rock star in that ridiculous jacket of yours, you could be wearing something warm right now_ , he would say, looking down at him disapprovingly.

“Fuck you, Hermann. At least I’m not wearing a parka in April.” Newt said quietly, sighing. He wondered, not for the first time, what Hermann thought about his disappearance. He probably hadn’t even noticed he was gone. Hermann was most likely sitting in the lab getting blackboards full of work done because Newt wasn’t there. He wouldn’t have to listen to Newt’s music or dodge piles of Kaiju entrails on the floor of the lab. It was probably heaven for Hermann.

 _Would he even care if he knew you were gone_ , a traitorous voice whispered at the back of his head. Newt shook his head, trying to banish that particular thought. He thought after ten years of working with Hermann, he knew him pretty well. Especially after drifting with Hermann, Newt thought he knew that the grudging respect they both held for each other was friendship. However, after a month with no change in their relationship, maybe he was wrong. Maybe Hermann really did hate him, and he wouldn’t even mind that he was gone.

This particular train of thought was interrupted by footsteps outside of his room. Newt’s door opened, and the Italian from the first day stepped through. Without the paint on his face and wearing regular clothes, he looked marginally less terrifying, although something about him still put Newt on edge.

“Ciaran wants to see you.” The man, Pietro, said curtly. Newt considered refusing, but he was flanked by two large men and he was clearly not asking, so Newt stood up and followed them out the door. They rushed him quickly down various hallways. Trying to keep track of all the twists and turns was as difficult as the first time, and Newt was no more oriented than the first time he went through those hallways.

They walked up a few steps, and the walls stopped dripping with condensation. They were closer to the surface, and the sound of the ocean receded until it was barely audible. They drew to a halt in front of a strong oak door built around a gap in the stone wall. Stepping inside, the dank cave walls turned into paneled wood and covered furniture. Ciaran Flood was sitting at a desk at the far end of the room, and looked up when the group entered.

The guards marched Newt over to Ciaran’s desk. There was an iron ring embedded in the edge with a chain fed through. One of the men handcuffed Newt’s hands and then the three of them left the room, leaving him with Ciaran.

Newt shook his hands. “Are these really necessary? I’m like eighty pounds lighter than you. You could take me in a fight. Hell, _anyone_ could take me in a fight.”

Flood ignored Newt’s babbling and pushed aside a stack of papers he was examining. “I think you know why you are here, Newton. I must admit I was a little disappointed in you.”

Newt frowned. “You’re disappointed in _me_?”

After the dissolution of the Breach, when the details of the PPDC operation became public, I read into your background. You were involved in some political protests in your college days. How did you come from that to supporting the very machine you should be trying to tear down?” Ciaran asked, his eyes piercing into Newt’s.

Newt remembered those days. Never the most social person, he had thrown himself into his studies, trying to graduate as soon as he could, juggling three doctorate programs at the same time. All that work left little time for any kind of socializing, which suited him just fine, but his one hobby was a radical group on campus that he became involved in. There was a lot of anger that was translated into protest work. After all his graduate work was complete, his work and the appearance of the Kaiju massively derailed any interest Newt had in going to protests.

“You think the human race is a machine?” Newt shot back, getting irritated with the constant questioning.

“The worst there is.” Ciaran answered. “We overpopulate the Earth, filling it with people and pollution and killing all the other life forms on the planet. The human race is a cancer, and if nobody does anything about it, our planet will be destroyed.”

Newt was unimpressed with Ciaran’s proselytizing. “And you think the Kaiju don’t want to pollute the air and kill the other life forms?”

“This same thing happens every few thousand of years. Some new species comes along that dwarfs the other species. They become top of the food chain. It’s survival of the fittest.”

Newt rolled his eyes. He wasn’t about to explain to the man why everything he had just said about evolution was wrong, because this was the kind of man who had made up his mind and wouldn’t be swayed by facts.

Newt opened his mouth to retort, but Ciaran interrupted him. “Don’t you agree that the Kaiju are magnificent creatures?”

Newt glanced down at the edges of his tattoos poking through his shirt sleeves. “Yes,” he replied simply.

Ciaran stood up, running his fingers along his desk. “They say that everyone remembers exactly where they were on K-Day, that it was the kind of thing ingrained in their memories forever.”

Newt knew where he had been on K-Day. He had been emerging from an 18-hour caffeine-fuelled study binge when his roommate came running in and told him to come to the lounge, that there was something on television that he needed to see. Newt had stood with all the other students watching Trespasser destroy the San Francisco and then move inland. The people around him were gasping and babbling to each other, but for the first time in Newt’s life he was silent. He was watching the destruction on a small television screen, but the power from those images stuck with him until he finished his sixth doctorate a few months later in record time so he could begin his work.

“I was in San Francisco on K-Day, there for a business conference. I had gone out early that morning to see the sights before the crowds came out. I was looking at the Golden Gate Bridge in the morning light as Trespasser came out of the ocean. That bridge, that took four long years to build, the height of human ingenuity, was destroyed in a few short seconds. Trespasser was huge and powerful, and he destroyed the bridge without a second thought. It was nothing to him, and so were the cars and people he pushed into the water. That was the moment that I recognized the awesome power of the Kaiju. That was when I was sent on my new path.” Ciaran had delivered this speech standing up, his voice hushed and reverential. While the other members of the cult Newt had seen looked less terrifying out of their robes, Flood attracted the same kind of attention and gravitas out of the robes as in them. Newt could see how this man had become the head of the Cult. He had a certain pull.

“What was it like?” Ciaran finally said, leaning down to look Newt right in the eyes. This was clearly the question that he had wanted to ask this entire time. He was dying to know.

Newt leaned back as far as his handcuffs would allow. Although the tone of their conversation thus far had been fairly friendly, Newt hadn’t forgotten why he was here, and he didn’t know what would happen to him if he gave away all his cards.

When Newt didn’t answer his question, Ciaran’s expression turned cloudy, a frown gathering in the corners of his mouth.

“I brought you here to have a civil conversation, but if you are not willing to participate, I suppose we will move on. My people have been waiting for a very long time for what we will be bringing about. The Cult’s structure almost did not survive the collapse of the Breach last month, but I rallied them. I promised them that their day would come. And then here you are, dropped into my lap as if by happenstance. Serendipitous, don’t you think?”

Newt didn’t think being kidnapped and held prisoner was very serendipitous, but he stayed silent.

Ciaran opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a vial of a dark liquid. “I need to know what you saw in the Drift. If you will not share this information willingly, I will be forced to use other methods. My companions have also expressed concern over your, eligibility as a suitable prophet. Your actions cooperating with the PPDC cannot go unpunished, I’m afraid. In order to serve our purposes, you will be required to repent. I will ask you once now, and once later. Do you repent?”

Newt stared. “For saving millions of lives and stopping our planet from being destroyed? Not a chance.”

Ciaran looked at him carefully. “Very well. Remember you said that when I see you in a few days. Good day, Mr. Geiszler.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The past few days had been chaotic at the Shatterdome. Herc’s desperate attempts to shuffle around the authority and find an interim Marshall to run the base had caused an uproar, both within the base and with the higher authorities.

Herc had sequestered himself in his office for an hour-long conference call with his superiors on the International Council. After half an hour loud, Australian shouting could be heard inside the room, and there were many who hovered outside the door pretending to do something important while they waited for Marshall Hansen to emerge. Finally, after an hour, he did, and when he saw the group of people waiting outside the office, he roared.

“This base isn’t gonna run itself. Get back to work!” The more timid employees ran off, and Herc went to find Raleigh and Mako, who were still training recruits until all of the base’s affairs could be put in order.

He called them over and growled. “The Council doesn’t think that Harmon or Flood are ‘viable threats to international security’ and so they won’t give us any personnel or resources to track this guy down. They say they’ve given us enough funding as it is, and they won’t support any more crackpot theories.”

Raleigh frowned. “Did you tell them how important this was? They have to listen to you.”

Herc snorted. “Yeah, I told them they could shove their resources up their own asses, but I don’t think that help any. Looks like we’re on our own. We won’t be getting any help from that end.”

Herc made some more calls, and finally convinced the old Marshall from the base in Sydney to come to Hong Kong and take interim control while they were in Alaska. He arrived on base the next day, punched Herc in the shoulder and set up shop in his quarters.

Finally, after three days of intense restructuring of responsibilities, the Shatterdome was finally ready for four of its senior members to leave.

On the day they were set to leave, Mako, Raleigh, and Tendo ran back and forth to the helicopter they had requisitioned, loading equipment and rations into the storage compartments. Herc was looking over some final paperwork with the financial department on the tarmac when Hermann walked up, hood of his parka pulled up against the wind.

“Marshall, I need to talk to you.” Hermann demanded, drawing to a halt in front of Herc as the other man left with the paperwork.

Herc sighed. “Dr. Gottlieb, I believe we discussed this already. We can’t spare the personnel for you to come to Alaska. This will most likely be a dangerous operation, and I will not endanger the life of someone who is not trained to protect themselves.”

Hermann frowned. “You are allowing Tendo to come along.”

“Choi is coming because we need at least one person with technical expertise. I can only look after so many people.”

“If this is about my leg, Marshall, I can assure you that it has never been a problem. People have underestimated me because of it for years.”

“Hermann,” Herc began, using his first name for the first time, “If this operation were anything but a gunfight, I’d trust you with my life. You are competent and intelligent, and the best damn scientist we have in this place. I know you can handle yourself, but these are very serious people we’re going after. I just don’t want to lose any more lives needlessly.”

Hermann watched Raleigh and Tendo wrestle a heavy box into the cargo compartment of the helicopter. “Marshall, I’m afraid I’ve been unclear. I’ve just watched my lab partner being dragged kicking and screaming into a van only to be brought to a group of obsessive Kaiju fanatics who want him for god-knows-what. If it weren’t for me, he would be safe and sound talking my ear off about the mating cycle of the Kaiju. I will not stay at the Shatterdome. If you don’t let me on that helicopter, I will find my own way to Alaska.”

Herc let out a laugh. “You’re a suicidal bastard, Gottlieb. I like that about you. Get packed.”

Three hours later, the five of them were packed into a helicopter, pulling up out over the Hong Kong Harbor. Tendo was piloting the copter, and he flew easily out over the water.

“I learned everything I know from my sister. I’m not as good as her, but-” Tendo cut off as he swerved to avoid a huge group of birds flying right at them. Hermann looked green, feeling skeptical about the piloting skills of Tendo.

Mako was Tendo’s copilot, and at this she seemed to excel. Although she had never flown a helicopter in real life, she had completed a great deal of training on different military vehicles as part of her Jaeger training, and her training was translating well so far to practical experience.

Raleigh grinned, leaning near the window. They hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to take the Jaeger out after closing the Breach, and so being up high above the ocean again was a sight he had missed.

Eventually the novelty from flying in the helicopter wore off and everyone settled back into routine. It was too loud from the helicopter blades to make much conversation, so everyone was left with their own thoughts to keep them company.

Tendo followed the Chinese coast pretty closely, never flying more than 20 miles away from land. Late that night when he was tired and their gas gauge was dipping into the dangerous zone, Tendo pulled into another minor LOCCENT base for them to rest and refuel. Raleigh and Mako shared a room, but everyone else got their own quarters, the employees of the base wondering why five members of the Hong Kong Shatterdome were all the way out on a remote base.

The next morning, they set out again, Tendo having drunk four straight cups of espresso to guarantee that he would have enough energy. Mako looked at the bottom of his glass and shook her head, wondering how hard he would crash when the caffeine wore off. Sure enough, halfway through that afternoon, the helicopter began to dip from side to side as Tendo’s wakefulness wavered.

Hermann and Raleigh were white-knuckling their seats as Tendo piloted down to land on a beach far from any people. He thought they were in Russian territory by then, but nobody could quite understand what he was saying around the yawns. Mako wrestled Tendo into the copilot seat and then sat in the driver seat herself.

“Are you sure you know how to pilot this helicopter, Miss Mori?” Herc asked worriedly.

Mako pulled a few of the switches on the control board and pulled gently into the air. “I’ve been watching Tendo fly for two days now. It can’t be as hard as people say.”

Herc and Hermann looked skeptical, but her take-off was perfect, and Raleigh was nodding along as if he would trust Mako if she were flying a Jumbo Jet into hell, so they sat back and let her fly.

Tendo tried to contribute flying tips for Mako, but all of his sentences slurred off until he fell asleep two minutes after they took off. Late that afternoon, they were nearing their last fueling point. Tendo was still fast asleep, sliding down the seat during the ride so his seat belt was keeping his head upright, so Mako consulted the map herself.

“The last base should be just over that hill!” Mako shouted, trying to be heard over the chopper’s blades. Everyone’s ears were a little overstimulated from the third day of riding in a helicopter, and they nodded.

Mako pulled over the hill to see open moors, snow-covered grasses stretching out in three directions, only to be stopped by the waterline. The gas gauge was hitting the critical mark, so Mako brought the helicopter down to rest on the beach.

She turned around in her seat, facing the three who were in the back. “The base should have been right over that hill, Marshall. I’m not sure if I read the map wrong, or…”

“Outdated,” Tendo mumbled from his uncomfortable position in the front of the helicopter.

Mako turned to him. “What did you say?”

“I say it’s outdated,” Tendo tried to sit up, only to get entangled in his seat belt. “That’s not the right map.”

Everyone looked devastated. “How were you navigating?” Raleigh asked in horror.

Tendo tapped his head. “I was using this thing right here.” He was still half asleep and ended up poking himself in the eyeball, and so everyone else ignored him.

Herc leaned down to his bag, pulling out a bulky GPS device. “Always plan ahead, gentlemen. We’ve been following the coastline pretty closely this entire time, so we can’t be too far off course.” He booted the device up and waited for it to find their location while everyone hovered around anxiously.

The device beeped, and Herc typed in the coordinates for the base. “See?” He pointed at the screen. “We’re only two miles off. The base is two miles northwest from here.”

Mako checked the gas gauge. “I don’t think we have enough fuel to make it two miles, sir.”

Raleigh pulled the door open and jumped out, startling everyone. “I guess we’re walking. Two miles isn’t that bad, and we’ve been sitting in a helicopter for three days. I could use some exercise.”

It was decided that Raleigh, Mako, and Herc would walk to the base and bring back the fuel for their vehicle. Tendo was still asleep, so he stayed behind, and Hermann was left to look after the helicopter.

Hermann watched the small group make their way across the sand dunes to disappear over the hills overhead. He knew they would be gone for a while, and moved to stand next to the ocean. The base they were aiming for was probably the nearest populated area for miles. There were no towns anywhere near, fishermen the only ones to come out to a place this desolate.

Hermann gazed out at the Bering Sea, zipping his parka up against the chilling wind. This far north, the snow was beginning to show itself, drifting down and landing in the grey water. Everything that Hermann could see was grey, their landed helicopter the only thing to break the monotony.

He stood against the tide, watching the waves crash against the shore. Standing here, it was hard to imagine that they were on their way to stop a portal from being opened underneath the ocean to let in gigantic creatures bound on destroying the planet. In his line of work, it was sometimes difficult to remember a time when his life was not ruled by the threat of extinction. For the past few years, the only thing Hermann had really focused on was stopping the Kaiju.

However, here, on the cold, gray shore of the Bering Sea, the world was untouched by catastrophe. There were no Kaiju, no Jaegers to mar its untouched state. This place looked the same as it had for thousands of years, and it would probably stay this way for years after that.

Hermann wondered if Newton was looking out on the same ocean wherever he was. He remembered Newton’s face as he last saw it, hurt and vulnerable. He had been asking for something that Hermann was unable to give. Or perhaps he was unwilling. Hermann sighed, wishing that the two of them could be in the lab driving each other crazy and that none of this had happened.

Eventually, the trio made it back, accompanied by a military truck carting a huge fuel container for their helicopter. Tendo was awakened by the sound of the refuelling and came stumbling out of the helicopter. His hair was plastered to one side of his face, and he still looked disoriented, like he wasn’t sure what year it was, but at least he was awake.

Herc thanked the soldier who had helped them fuel their helicopter, and they took off again, this time Tendo flying again.

They drove through the night, Raleigh and Mako falling asleep on each other’s shoulders. Hermann tried to sleep, but the constant shuddering from the helicopter engine was aggravating his leg, and he spent the night clutching his knee and grimacing, hoping to reach their destination as fast as possible.

The night was spent flying over the ocean on their last stretch to the Alaskan coastline. As the morning sun rose, Tendo drove right into it, squinting against the sun’s rays. The sight of the coastline lifted everyone’s spirits, because every one of them wanted to be out of the helicopter for good.

Finally, the Alaskan PPDC base came into sight. The place had been abandoned for years, but the helicopter landing pad was still intact, and Tendo brought the helicopter down to touch base with the ground.

Raleigh got out of the helicopter and looked around the place he had lived with his brother many years ago. There were ghosts here, but he tried not to think about them as he helped everyone take their luggage out of the helicopter and run inside to where it was at least warmer than in the snow.


	7. Rebirth and Old Death

Newt couldn’t sleep, drifting in and out of consciousness through dreams filled with crushing pressure and alien bodies struggling to push out of an impossible space. Newt shifted from a dream where he was face-to-face with Otachi, its phosphorescent tongue dripping acid to the sight of three men standing over his bed.

Newt jerked awake instantly, sitting up to fend them off, but he a bag was thrown over his head and dragged out of the room. Newt struggled, elbowing someone in the gut. There was a satisfying grunt, but they kept moving. Someone dragged him into the back of a vehicle, and the engine started.

For fifteen minutes, the car drove, the steady thump of windshield wipers creating the soundtrack in the silence. The car drew to a halt, and Newt was dragged out of the car, the bag ripped from his head. An arctic wind hit him in the face, and he threw one hand up against the driving ice.

“You must demonstrate your penance. First, you must suffer for your transgressions, apologize for your sins.” The woman from the warehouse was speaking, her voice muffled by the wind and the scarf she wore over her mouth. All the cult members were outfitted for the weather, in heavy jackets. They were standing on a wide, snowy plain. It was still night-time, and there was nothing to see for miles.

Newt wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. “What does that mean?”

“Making it back to our base will show your commitment to reforming. Only through suffering may the prophet become worthy of our cause.” The woman said.

Newt frowned, and then realized that they meant to leave him here in the snow.

“Wait!” He shouted, but all three of the cult members got into the car and drove off before he could stop them. The car made a circle around Newt and drove back the way they came. He watched them leave in disbelief. It was the middle of the night, in the midst of a snowstorm. They had left him with no protection from the elements or provisions.

Newt turned in a circle, looking at the vast emptiness around him. It was still dark, and there was no lights except for the quickly receding taillights from the car that brought him here. Newt started running after the car, but then stopped. They had let him go out in the open. Maybe this was his chance to escape.

This was his first look outside at where he was. From all the snow and ice, Newt’s best guess was Alaska somewhere. His stomach sank in dismay. How many people lived in Alaska, he wondered. It was a sparsely populated part of the world, which was why the PPDC concentrated their efforts on other areas of the Pacific Rim. It could be hundreds of miles to the nearest populated area, and without any winter gear, Newt wouldn’t last out here more than an hour or two.

Groaning loudly in frustration, Newt realized that his only chance of survival would be to head back to the Cult. He didn’t know what they wanted out of him, but his chances of survival would be slightly longer there than they would be walking aimlessly in a snowstorm.

Newton started walking, the vague outline of a road just visible under the drifting snow. The tail lights had disappeared, and he was walking blind. Thankfully, the wind was at his back as he walked, the snow and ice parting around him. The temperature was definitely below zero, and he jumped up and down a little bit while rubbing his arms to stay warm. His leather jacket was doing absolutely nothing to protect him from the cold, and he was already shivering violently, teeth chattering so loud he could hear them over the wind.

After a five-minute walk, Newt looked down and saw in horror that the outline of the road had disappeared underneath him. Dropping to his knees, he pulled his jacket sleeves over his hands and dug down to the earth. He got down a few feet only to find more snow. He had walked off the road without realizing it.

“Fuck,” He shuddered, standing up again. He jumped up and down, rubbing his arms.

“Fuck!” He shouted this time, wishing that someone nearby would hear him. The wind had changed directions, swirling around him and fogging up his glasses. The only thing he could see was snow. It had only been five minutes, but his toes had gone numb, his boots covered in a heavy crust of snow. His ears were aching, the cold stinging.

Hoping he was walking straight, Newt went back and found the outline of the road. He came across a pole in the road, and rubbing the condensation off his glasses, he looked to see that the road branched in two directions.

He wondered which way to go, looking in both directions. They both looked equally desolate and cold, and he couldn’t remember which way the car had turned.

Newt chose the left-hand road and started walking. This section of the road was built higher than the rest, and it was easier to see where the road ended and the ditch began. He was shuddering full-body now, and the numbness had crept up his legs and to his hands as well. He could feel ice crystals forming in his hair, and his breath hissed out between his teeth.

Newt glanced up and forgot the fact that he was freezing to death for a moment. The aurora borealis stretched out above him, glowing green against the backdrop of stars. It was beautiful, Newt managed to think. He had spent most of his life in large cities, and in the city you could barely see the stars, let alone this awe-inspiring sight. The sky was lit up, and Newt stopped walking without realizing, taking a quiet moment to look up at the lights and the stars.

The dawning realization that he couldn’t feel his feet standing on the ground brought him back to himself, and he knew that he had to pick up the pace if he wanted to survive. Cresting the top of a small incline, Newt laughed shortly when he saw the dim lights of a building complex in the distance. He was only about a mile and a half away, and he thought he could make it.

It was so cold it was getting hard to think, and Newt tripped over his own feet down the steep incline. His hands scraped against the snow, and he brought them up to see he had scraped some of the skin off. Newt struggled to his feet, unsteady and stumbling.

He only made it a few steps before losing his balance again and tumbling into the ditch this time. He crashed through a thin crust of snow, his entire body submerged in a snow bank. He gasped as the snow went down his shirt and up through his pant legs. It began to melt against his skin which only made him colder. Newt struggled to get out of the snow bank, but only sunk further in.

Exhausted, Newt stopped moving and stayed where he was. Looking up at the aurora borealis from here was calming, and lying in the snow he wasn’t sure why he had been so hell-bent on getting out of here. The urgency of his situation receded, and Newt looked lethargically at the lights in the distance. It was getting hard to think, and he couldn’t put two and two together.

Newt thought about Hermann and what he would say if he were here. He could practically see him standing on the road in front of him, stupid parka zipped up against the wind.

 _Newton, in all the time I’ve known you, you’ve done some idiotic things, but this is by far the most idiotic_ , Hermann said, crossing his arms.

“‘m cold, Herm-” Newton croaked, wondering feverishly how Hermann was walking on all this snow without his cane.

 _Of course you’re cold, Dr. Geiszler. You’re wearing a thin leather jacket and it’s negative twenty degrees out here_.

“Go away, Hermann. You’re not my mom,” Newton said vaguely. He was beginning to feel tired, and wondered how nice it would be if he just closed his eyes for a few moments.

 _Your insults get worse and worse. Come on, Newton. You need to stand up_. Hermann was kneeling in front of him now. His stupid face was in his, and Newt couldn’t ignore him.

“Can’t,” Newt said simply. That was true enough. He felt exhausted, like he could sleep for years. The shivering had stopped, and every muscle felt lethargic and slow.

 _Newton, if you don’t stand up right now and keep walking towards those lights, you will die. And if you die, I will take every single one of your limited edition Kaiju bobbleheads and throw them in the trash_. Hermann’s face was twisted in concern, and Newt started to wonder if this was really happening. Hermann would never look so worried. Not over him, at least.

“Like hell you will,” He grunted, moving to stand up. He dragged himself out of the snowbank, pulling out onto the road. He got to his feet and looked around, but Hermann was gone.

The edges of his vision were going black, and every joint ached. He started to zone out, but forced himself to keep moving his feet because Hermann would probably haunt him if he didn’t. That would be so annoying.

Finally, the outline of a double gate came into view, and Newt stepped up to it, leaning against the gate and pounding on it weakly.

“Hey,” He managed to get out. “Lemme in.”

He heard the gate start to open and knew that he had reached the very edge of his strength. He fell backwards into the snow as footsteps came toward him.

“Do you repent?” A voice asked him from high above. He struggled to concentrate, but he felt like his bones were freezing.

 _No_ , he thought defiantly.

“Yes,” he said, teeth chattering and vision going. As Newt finally let himself fall asleep, his vision slowly turned black.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raleigh walked along the observation deck, the cool metal clanking under his boots. This was the best spot in the place for watching the Jaegers spew sparks as they were fixed up. It was a truly incredible sight, and always the first thing Raleigh would take people to see when they visited the Alaskan Shatterdome.

Now, of course, the whole base was cold and empty. The snow and ice had made its way deep inside the base, leaving everything recognizable for Raleigh coated in a layer of ice. Herc and Tendo had been on the satellite phone for hours, calling every contact they had in the hopes they would know something about the Cult’s whereabouts. Raleigh couldn’t be in the room anymore, so he decided to take a walk around the base for old times’ sake.

Now that he was out in the base, he thought that this was a bad idea. He kept passing places that made him think of Yancy, and the jolt from those memories left a bad taste in his mouth. He had walked past the mess hall where they had spent a lot of time stuffing their faces before a particularly long mission and the control deck where they had received feedback on their performance in the simulations.

He had steered clear of their living quarters, knowing that that might push him over the edge of okay into really not okay. He could almost hear the sounds of the LOCCENT base at full functionality, the crew running around with tools and paperwork, the sound of Gipsy Danger being repaired after a particularly nasty fight.

He thought he heard the sound of Gipsy Danger powering up, the whir of the engines mixing with the plasma cannon warming up. He spun around in a panic to see nothing but empty walkways and drifts of snow covering the floor. Raleigh shook his head, trying to get that association out of his head. He had left Gipsy Danger through a portal to the Anteverse. It was completely destroyed, left in an alien dimension. There was no getting her back, just like there was no getting Yancy back.

Raleigh finally couldn’t hold back, and he walked to the living quarters and rested his hand on the cold door of his and Yancy’s room. For almost their entire lives, the brothers had shared a room. When they were kids, Raleigh would wake Yancy up in the middle of the night, wanting him to come outside and look at the stars. Yancy would grumble and shove him away, but soon yield to Raleigh’s hyperactive enthusiasm. They would look out the window up at the stars, at their endless possibilities.

Even when they had gone to the big city, Raleigh joining Yancy in a crappy apartment near a party college where Yancy was desperately trying to get an education. Raleigh worked at a mechanic’s shop nearby, and the two of them had payed the bills as best they could.

After K-Day, of course, when they joined the Jaeger program, the two of them were inseparable as always. They were drift compatible.

Raleigh hesitated, his hand on the doorknob, but took a breath and pushed it open. He walked in, a hand on his heart as he saw the bunk bed was still intact. He wondered if anyone had slept in it in the past 5 years, or if they had left the quarters untouched, an unseen memorial to their felled Jaeger pilots.

Raleigh stepped forward, moving carefully and sat down on Yancy’s bunk, on the bed. His feet brushed the floor, and he leaned back, looking at the top bunk, where he had slept. He imagined what it was like for Yancy to sleep in this bed, what it was like for Yancy to pilot a Jaeger with his brother, what it was like for Yancy to be ripped out of Gipsy Danger and flung to the Bering Sea far below to die.

Raleigh shook his head, stopping that train of thought. He didn’t need to imagine. He was connected to Yancy, he _knew_ what all that was like.

He sat up, leaning against the wall and remembering what it was like to move in, he so enthusiastic, Yancy level-headed as always.

 _This is gonna be the best thing to ever happen to the Becket brothers, Yance-_ , Raleigh had said, tossing his bag on the top bunk to claim it, bouncing around the room and checking all the appliances.

Yancy had laughed, shaking his head at his little brother. _You’re gonna have to spend all your time with your boring brother, kid. You sure you can handle that?_

 _Come on Yancy, we’re gonna kick some Kaiju ass together!_ Raleigh shouted, punching his brother on the shoulder.

“Raleigh?” A small voice came, shaking him out of his reverie. Mako was standing at the entrance to the room, half-in, half-out, as if she wasn’t sure whether she was welcome here. “Can I come in? You’ve been gone for a long time.”

Raleigh looked up and smiled a small smile. “Of course you can come in.”

Mako came in, looking around the space and sitting down gingerly next to Raleigh, as if the place were sacred. “Is this where you slept?”

Raleigh nodded. “Me and Yancy, yeah.”

“You miss him.” She said. It wasn’t a question, but a certainty. She knew nearly as much about Yancy as he did.

Raleigh sighed. “Every day. Some days, I think it gets easier, and then-” He waved his hand vaguely around the space he had shared so much with Yancy.

Mako nodded. “I was so young when I lost my family, but sometimes, I still wonder what my life would be like if they were still here. And now, with-” _With Stacker_ , she didn’t need to say. Raleigh knew all of it. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him, hugging his waist.

“This place is so cold, Raleigh,” Mako said, her breath frosting in the air.

“It wasn’t always,” He muttered.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newt was immersed in hot water, and that brought him back to his senses. For a moment, he thought he was dreaming again, and he lashed out, fighting off invisible threats. Hands held him down, and he realized he was fully awake. The walls around him were made out of rock, and the room was illuminated by candlelight. He was back with the cult.

After the initial shock of being dunked in hot water, his body caught up with him and started to shudder violently. He gripped the sides of the tub tightly, riding it out. Although he was sitting in steaming water, his body still thought it was freezing to death, and he shivered and gasped like he was still out in the snow.

Natasha came up to him, offering him a warm mug of something. “Drink this,” She ordered.

He looked up at her, intending to glare, but he was still shaking so hard he couldn’t even speak. He took the mug, his hands shaking, and gulped down the whole thing. To his relief, it was warm milk, not something more sinister.

Newt’s glasses were fogging up in the heat, and he took them off, placing them on the side of the tub. Most of the people left the room, except one man who stayed to keep watch on Newt as he rode out his near hypothermia.

As the shudders died down and Newt could think clearly again, he noticed in consternation that he was nearly naked. He had been stripped down to his boxer shorts before they dunked him in the water. He wondered inanely what they had done with his leather jacket.

When the water had turned lukewarm, and Newt was considering asking for a towel, the door opened and Ciaran, Pietro, and Natasha walked back in.

“I hear you have taken my words to heart, realized your sins.” Ciaran began, standing over the edge of the tub. The other two took up positions on the sides. Newt was uncomfortably aware of how vulnerable he was, and he curled in on himself slightly.

He glared at Ciaran, intending on throwing his words back in his face. However, he remembered how bone-cold he had been out there, and how he would not survive if they threw him out there again. Demonstrating a level of self-restraint he would not have shown a week ago, Newt nodded.

All three of them bared their teeth in smiles, and Newt shrunk further down into the tub.

“Excellent. Unfortunately, words are wind, and we need you to fully commit.” Ciaran said, leaning down and placing both hands on the corner of the tub, staring Newt down.

Newt felt a flutter of nerves deep in his stomach. “Commit how?”

“Although we do not share the beliefs of many of the world’s religions, misguided as they are, the ceremony of baptism is one shared by many religions. After all, the tradition of being born again renewed from the sea is one we certainly can believe in.” Ciaran pierced Newton with his gaze, and he knew that this was a test somehow.

Newt crossed his arms over his chest defensively. “You want to baptize me?”

Ciaran nodded. “Of course, the ceremony may only be conducted voluntarily. Otherwise, it is meaningless.”

The three of them waited for Newt to answer. He knew with certainty that he did not want these people anywhere near him, but he also knew that what they were offering him was not a choice. He wondered what they would do to him if he refused. Throw him back into the cold, perhaps. Or maybe something worse. He didn’t like the way these people looked at him, their eyes dark and hungry. These were people who had put everything they had into a set of beliefs. Those beliefs were under attack, and if Newt didn’t give them what they wanted, they would find a way to get it.

Feeling sick to his stomach, Newt nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Ciaran smiled beatifically and motioned for Newt to get out of the tub. He did, still feeling shaky and ill from being outside. The cold air in this place didn’t help any. The three of them had him walk between them down the hallways toward the altar room. Newt was hugging himself against the cold, shivering slightly. He was still mostly unclothed, and he dripped water onto the ground with every step he took.

The altar room was filled with maybe a dozen worshippers, much less than the first ceremony he had been to. Apparently only the select few were allowed to see their prophet baptized.

They drew to a halt in front of the altar and the statue of Trespasser. There was a stone basin set up on the step, filled with water. It rippled with the vibrations of the steps around it.

Ciaran stepped to the front of the room, rolling up his sleeves. “Today, we have taken the first step towards salvation. Our prophet has understood the errors of his ways, and begun the path toward true enlightenment.”

The worshippers in the room nodded agreeably, inspecting Newt critically. He realized that most of his tattoos were on display, the colors splayed out across his skin like a map of his passions. Newt wished they would stop staring at him, but there was nowhere else to go.

Ciaran extended a hand, beckoning Newt over to him. Newt walked over reluctantly, his bare feet leaving damp footprints behind him. He pointed toward the basin, and Newt took a breath, stepping into it and sinking to his knees. He was unable to stop his gasp when he stepped in. Unlike the tub he had just been in, this basin was filled with cool water, and it came up to his waist. He dipped his fingers in and brought them to his lips, tasting salt. The basin was filled with seawater.

Ciaran placed two hands on Newt’s shoulders and continued to sermonize to his followers. Newt shuddered from the tight trip on his shoulders and tuned him out. He continued to talk for a few minutes, but Newt was focusing all his attention on keeping himself calm. He could feel the familiar flutterings of a panic attack starting in his stomach, and he clenched his fists, forcing himself to stay focused on the physical sensations he was feeling and not to give in to panic.

Ciaran’s voice got louder, and Newt tuned back in to what he was saying. “Let our prophet be bathed in the sea water, let him understand.”

His hands began pushing down on Newt’s shoulders, and Newt only had time to gulp in a lungful of air before he was completely submerged in the water.

Newt expected to be pulled up after a few seconds, and when he wasn’t, he started to push up against Flood’s hands. Ciaran held firm, and Newton grabbed his arms, and when he wouldn’t let him up, began to claw at his forearms.

Newt opened his eyes and looked up to see the indistinct half-moon of Ciaran’s face hovering upside down above him. He was looking down and smiling, and Newt held on to his lungful of air for as long as he could.

After an interminable period, when Newt felt like he needed to breathe in _right now_ , Ciaran’s hands finally eased and Newt burst out of the water, gasping in air desperately, holding back the panic thrumming in his head.

All in all, he had only been under for half a minute or so, but it had felt like longer.

“Rise, so we can see our Prophet renewed.” Ciaran said.

Newt gasped and shuddered, standing beside the basin in shock. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his glasses were long gone.

Someone pushed his arms up, and Newt realized they wanted to see his tattoos. He hung them up numbly, waiting in the cold air while more of the ceremony continued. He was long gone.

Finally, someone wrapped something warm around his shoulders and put his glasses back on his face. He let them lead him back down hallways to his small room, freezing, the warm bath forgotten.

A voice was hovering next to his ear. “Try to eat something. There are new clothes on the table. We will be back to check on you in the morning.”

 _Fuck you_ , he wanted to scream. He wanted to rage and fight and scratch, but he did none of those things, just curled up on his side and tried to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a small disclaimer that I don't really know anything about hypothermia, so all of that might be inaccurate.


	8. Lost and Found

Newt jolted awake from a particularly bad dream. He was beginning to dread falling asleep, just because he knew what was going to follow. He didn’t remember the dreams being so _violent_ in Hong Kong, but here they weren’t just realistic, but they seemed to be omens of events to come.

He shook his head hard, banishing those thoughts. Ciaran and his cult, while terrifying, did not have the technical expertise or connections to even come close to being able to open the portal again. At least, that’s what he told himself, sitting alone in his room.

The ‘baptism’ had shaken Newt more than he liked to admit, and he was now terrified not only of being asleep, but also being awake. He didn’t know what Ciaran would want the next time he sent for Newt, but he wasn’t going to wait around and find out. He had decided it was time to find a way out of this place.

Ever since he woke up the morning after the baptism, still shaking from the cold he shouldn’t feel anymore, Newt had been working one of the struts holding his bed together, digging into the small space and jerking it side to side. For a long time, he didn’t get any give, and Newt thought that it might be a dead end, until every time he jerked the strut it gave a little bit more.

Finally, after hours grinding the strut side to side and anxiously listening to the door in case someone was coming, Newt pulled the pole hard, and it broke off with a sharp clang. Newt froze, holding his breath in case someone heard the noise. After a few seconds, when there were no footsteps outside, he relaxed, pulling the pole out all the way.

The very edges of the pole had rusted away from the salt in the air, which was why it was so easy to break apart. Newt hefted it in his hands, feeling the weight of it. He nodded in satisfaction. It would serve his purposes nicely.

Newt waited for someone to come into the room. They usually did a few times a day to bring him food or escort him to the bathroom. The guards cycled between three or four people, and none of them would talk to him. All of them would come in and stare at him, their eyes wide and silent. Newt wasn’t sure what they were expecting out of a prophet, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t him. He always had a habit of not meeting expectations.

The sound of footsteps came finally, and Newt got into position behind the door. He knew that his only chance would be to take them by surprise, because he wouldn’t beat anyone in a struggle. Newt stood up quickly, and everything turned fuzzy. He had to put a hand on the bedside table and wait it out for a moment. He had been feeling weak since his walk outside, and his lack of sleep was not helping the situation.

The lock turned in the door, seeming to take an eternity, and Newt raised his pipe. The door slowly opened, and one of the cult members came in with a tray of food. Newt didn’t hesitate, but swung the pipe, hitting the man dead center on the back of the head. He crumpled, and the tray of food hit the ground.

Newt kneeled down, making sure he was still breathing. When he heard uneven breaths coming from the man, he sighed in relief. Seized by a sudden thought, Newt grabbed the man’s feet and pulled off his boots. When they gave him new clothes, they hadn’t bothered to give him shoes, and Newt was not planning on going outside again without ample protection.

Newt stepped into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind him and glancing around for anyone else. The dank hallway was deserted, and he sighed in relief.

Picking a direction at random, Newt started walking, his sock-covered feet sliding soundlessly across the cold stone floor. Every time he reached a turn, he poked his head out first to see if there was anyone there. Although his heart rose to his throat every time he took a turn, after ten minutes, he still hadn’t seen or heard anyone. It was amazing how big this place was, every hallway seeming to branch into two more hallways.

Newt slowed when he heard voices ahead. He had reached the huge atrium where they held the ceremonies. It was only a handful of people inside, whispering softly among themselves. There was a group being shown around, and Newt wondered if they were newly arrived. He tried to hear what they were saying, but it was too indistinct, and he moved on.

Everywhere he went, he passed a multitude of doors that led to rooms, but he didn’t open any of them, because they didn’t look important enough to be a way out. However, after going down a few other hallways, he realized that he wasn’t going anywhere. He needed a new strategy than wandering aimlessly, because someone would wander across him eventually.

He turned another corner, and the floor started to slope upwards noticeably. The walls around him changed, lighter and not covered in condensation. The floor under him leveled out, and now he was in a small alcove with a desk and another room leading off of it. He wondered wryly if he was in some kind of office.

The next room looked promising, and Newt stepped through to see a long panel of blinking lights. There was an open doorway leading off of this one, but before he stepped through, Newt took a closer look at the machinery sitting on rollers. There was a squat cylindrical machine resting beside the control panel. It had an extended antenna with supportive struts.

Newt frowned, looking at the other doorway. Despite himself, he drew closer to the machine, examining it. There was a small drawer that could be pulled out, and Newt drew it out, looking inside. There was a small display screen on the inside as well as a grouping of needles where something could be slotted. Without labels or a more extensive exploration, Newt couldn’t tell what this machine was to be used for, but he knew it was some kind of transmitting device from the antenna, to be used after reading something from the slot.

Abandoning the control panel, Newton went to the next room in case someone came in. Immediately, he knew this was the wrong way, as this seemed to be some kind of storage room instead of a way out.

Before he could leave, he heard the quiet hum of machinery, and saw a glass container sitting in the corner. Curious, he drew nearer, trying to see what was inside. With a jolt, Newt recognized the object in the glass.

Floating in ammonia was a giant Kaiju claw, attached to a sliver of finger bone. It was surprisingly well-preserved, and Newt drew closer, putting his hand up to the glass. With horror, he put two and two together and realized what the machine in the other room was to be used for. It turns out the cult did have their resources.

Spinning around, Newt came face to face with a very angry Pietro. As Pietro’s fist connected with Newt’s jaw, he crumpled to the floor. He hadn’t even heard him come in.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Do you have any two’s?” Mako asked, holding her cards in front of her face and peeking at Raleigh over them.

“Go fish,” Raleigh sighed, putting his cards face-down on the table.

Hermann watched them from the other side of the room, attempting to get some work done in his small notebook. Raleigh and Mako’s long card game had been going on for hours now, as they were all waiting.

Tendo had emerged from a long phone, call almost exclusively in Cantonese with a lot of shouting and negotiating, with a lead.

“I’m going to head down to Anchorage. I have some connections down there. Might be able to tell us where to find the Cult,” Tendo said, looking shifty about the nature of his ‘connection’. Herc had gotten suspicious, narrowing his eyes and saying he would go along. Tendo had protested, but Herc was insistent, and the two of them had taken the helicopter down to Anchorage yesterday afternoon.

For Raleigh, Mako, and Hermann, it was a waiting game. Raleigh tried to start a game of poker with the three of them, but something about the huge, empty base and the silence around them put everyone on edge, and they soon gave it up.

Hermann rubbed his forehead. He hadn’t gotten any sleep last night, his leg flaring up with every movement. He had feverish half-dreams of the ocean and dark stone walls, and he woke in a panic, clutching beside him for someone who was not there. He had felt cold all day, although he was dressed in multiple layers against the weather.

Hermann tried to put his uneasiness out of his mind, knowing it was illogical and unproductive. He had opened his notebook, trying to write down some equations, but the uneven sound of crashing waves kept interrupting his calm.

He finally gave up on writing when his pounding headache made it hard for him to see. He got to his feet unsteadily, leaning on his cane more than usual and hobbled to the bathroom before Raleigh or Mako noticed anything was wrong.

When he got there, he doubled over immediately and vomited, shaking uncontrollably. He was consumed by a fear that wasn’t his own, and Hermann waited for it to pass. Finally, he calmed and gripped the sink’s edge, dragging himself up. He splashed some water on his face and looked in the mirror. To his surprise, his right eye was ringed with red.

It was then that Hermann realized how he was feeling. The nausea, shaky legs, sensations that were not his own; these were all things he had felt right after his Drift with Newton, adrenaline and euphoria mixing with cold and panicked urgency. It was not unheard of for Jaeger pilots to feel connected to their Drift partners for days after a particularly intense session. However, there were no reports of the Drift affecting people more than a month after.

Hermann had always suspected that the triple drift had changed the typical way the neural drift functioned. For weeks after the Hong Kong battle, he had often been able to feel how Newton was feeling at particularly emotional moments. This had terrified him. It wasn’t bad enough that he had to be connected in a rush of endorphins to his lab partner, but he was subjected to his emotional state even after that.

This emotional closeness was why Hermann was so focused on keeping a distance between them afterwards. He could tell that Newton was hurt by his cool demeanor, but he simply could not handle the kind of vulnerability that would come from a discussion of what they had experienced. Of course, Hermann’s actions had been the ones to ultimately push Newton away.

He hadn’t experienced any of the latent Drift effects for weeks now, but ever since arriving in Alaska, the dreams and headaches had come back in force.

Hermann rubbed his eyes and sighed. He liked to think that if had been aware of the lingering effects of the triple drift, he would not have agreed to it so quickly. But of course, he knew that, given the chance, he would make the same choice again and again. Hermann slowly made his way back to the hangar, hoping Tendo and Herc were having better luck in Anchorage.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Herc looked sideways at Tendo, feeling skeptical about their plan. They were sitting outside a seedy dive bar in Anchorage, the stairs leading down under a neon sign that proclaimed the place as “Dusky Pete’s”.

“Is that a euphemism for something?” Herc grumbled as they crossed the street, pulling their jackets in against the cold. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

Tendo pulled open the door with one hand, letting Herc enter before him. “You’re only going to find shady people in shady places, Herc.”

Herc raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t realize we were on a first-name basis.”

Tendo grinned. “When in Rome, sir.”

The bar they entered was as seedy as it looked from the outside. Although it was late, there were only a handful of patrons scattered across the space, most of them headlong in their beer glasses.

Tendo looked around until he saw the man they were there for. Herc followed behind as Tendo walked up to a greasy-looking, blonde man with long hair sitting at a booth in the back. He had an entire bottle of wine sitting next to him, and he was busy reading a French newspaper when Tendo slid into the booth beside him.

The man glanced up, and upon noticing who it was, raised his eyebrows.

“Thought you were dead.” He said by greeting.

“I thought you were sober, Dane.” Tendo shot back, reaching out his hand. Dane looked down at it for a moment before taking the hand, shaking it once, and turning to Herc.

“Who’s the suit?” He asked. Herc looked down at himself. He was wearing casual clothes, as he and Tendo wanted to blend in with everyone else in Anchorage.

“I’m not wearin’ a suit.” Herc answered.

Dane narrowed his eyes. “I can spot the type. Australian, though. That’s a surprise.”

Tendo put his elbows on the table, trying to steer the conversation back to the point of their visit. “We’re looking for a man named Ciaran Flood. Or the Cult of the Kaiju. Whichever you have more information on.”

Up until this point in the conversation, Dane looked bemused but generally pleased to see Tendo again. However, at the mention of the Cult, he turned sharply. “I thought with that rosary on your wrist you’d know better than to go messing with people like that, Tendo.”

Tendo grimaced. “I’d rather stay far away from people like that, Dane, but I have no choice.”

Dane shook his head. “We always have a choice, Tendo.”

Tendo brought his his hands to rest on the table in supplication. “Can you accept that I have a very good reason for seeking them out?”

“Absolutely not. Those guys are bad news. I’ve heard some shit, Tendo. And you know I’ve heard shit before, but this is some seriously dark stuff.”

“Don’t you think that’s why I’ve been trying to find them? So their bad stuff doesn’t come out and affect everyone else?”

Dane smirked. “You aren’t planning on stopping these guys yourself, are you? No offense, but they’d kick your skinny ass.”

When he saw that neither Tendo or Herc were smiling, he sighed. “This is what it’s like for those people who buy alcohol for teenagers, yeah? Like, they know it’s bad for them, but they also know they’re going to get it somewhere else if they don’t buy it for them. Bethel, Alaska. If you go northwest along the coast, there’s a little fishing outpost. You can make contact with some of the cult members there. They need a place for prospective members to show up. How the hell you convince those people to let you into wherever they really are is beyond me.”

Tendo thanked him and stood up.

“If you’ll take some advice from me, I’d forget whatever business you have with those people and go home to Hong Kong. You got out of this stuff for a reason, remember.” Dane said, downing another full glass of red wine.

Tendo looked at him silently for a moment. “Thanks, Dane.”

Herc raised his hands in confusion as they left the bar. “That was it? I was expecting a clandestine meeting to be more dangerous.”

“Hoping you’d get into a fight, Marshall?” Tendo quirked a smile.

“Well, I wasn’t ruling it out.” Herc grumbled, getting back into their car. “How does that guy know so much about cults, anyway?”

“He used to be in one,” Tendo said. “Ever since he got out, he’s had a unique view on intelligence. I ran across him a few years ago, and it took me this long to track him down again. He’s not the kind of guy who wants to be found.”

“And what did he mean by you getting out of all this?” Herc asked, not starting the car until Tendo answered the question.

Tendo shrugged. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you, sir. There’s a lot you don’t know about me. We’ve all got a past.”

Herc grunted and started the car. “Why is it that the only people that ever help me are criminals?”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newt rose slowly from a dreamless sleep, the first he’d had in a long time. He came into consciousness, but didn’t move for a moment, dreading what would happen when he opened his eyes. Sure enough, the sight of the dark ceiling of his cell met his view.

He sat up awkwardly, his hands caught above his head. There was a clinking sound, and Newt was dismayed to discover that he was chained to the wall, two chains extending from iron rings above his head. He maneuvered himself so he was sitting against the wall, his hands hanging at the height of his shoulders.

The boots he had stolen were gone, and he noticed the bed he was sitting on was significantly newer than the one he had before. The bars at his feet looked sturdy and not rusted at all. The right side of his face felt sticky, and Newt wondered if he was bleeding.

Before too long, the door opened and Ciaran walked in. He drew up to the bed and took a seat on the side. Newt drew his legs up to his chest defensively. Unlike the last few times when they had conversations and Ciaran put on a show of civility, this time he was angry.

“Where did you think you were going to go?” He demanded sharply. Gone was the diplomat, the showman. That Ciaran was the one who rallied members of the cult and rose to the top. This Ciaran was the political protester, the one who blew up buildings with grenade launchers, the ruthless one.

Newt opened his mouth, but Ciaran interrupted before he could get a word in. “There’s nowhere to go for miles around here, but you knew that already. I thought we already demonstrated to you the futility of escape. Do you need another reminder?”

Newt shook his head silently, eyes wide.

“I tried to discuss my beliefs with you, to explain. You decided you would rather be flippant than to listen. I gave you an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, join us in earnest. Instead, you attacked one of my followers and abused my hospitality. I’m done trying to accommodate you. From now on, you will do what I tell you, or I will devise an appropriate punishment. Is that clear?” Ciaran’s voice was hard, and Newt could tell he was past any kind of negotiation.

“What is that machine for?” Newt asked instead of answering. He knew he should try not to antagonize this man, but he had to know.

Ciaran looked at him appraisingly for a moment. “Depending on when my associates get in touch, we will use the Kaiju claw to activate the transmitter and send the signal to the receiving end in the Pacific Ocean. This will allow the Breach to be opened again. The Precursors will come and finish what they began. As a show of faith, to demonstrate to them how devoted we are to their cause, we will sacrifice our Prophet, the Abomination. This will complete the cycle that began years ago and pave their way.”

He delivered this speech, the detail about killing Newt nearly an afterthought. It was like he wasn’t even talking to him, but to an invisible audience. Newt felt his stomach drop.

“Tomorrow night, we have another ceremony, one in which you are required to participate. We need to access your connection to the Kaiju. How often do you dream about them?”

Newt froze, wondering how he knew about the dreams.

Ciaran’s face clouded when Newt didn’t answer. He reached out and slapped Newt across the face almost casually. Newt’s head flew to the side with the force.

“How often?” Ciaran repeated the question.

“Whenever I fall asleep,” Newt answered quietly, tasting blood. He felt uneasy sharing any of this information with Flood.

“Good,” Ciaran nodded. “We’ll see if we can’t learn more about it during the ceremony.” He glanced up at Newt’s chained hands. “I have to apologize about that. I wanted to trust you. We all did.”

Ciaran gave Newt a patronizing look, as if somehow Newt was bringing this all on himself. Newt’s blood boiled and he watched as Ciaran left the room, locking the door behind him. Only after Ciaran left did Newt notice he was trembling.


	9. Phantoms and Friends

They came for him that night, opening his door and walking in silently. There were four cult members, but Newt didn’t recognize any of them. Like the first time he saw them, they were dressed in robes and dark face paint. Two of them were holding jars with some kind of glowing substance, and the light threw a disconcerting play of shadows over their faces. Newt shivered.

They unchained his hands from the wall, but then manacled his hands together in front of him, with a lead they could pull on and drag him along. It seemed they weren’t taking any chances this time.

Two of the worshippers walked behind him and two ahead, and Newt followed along as best he could, stumbling slightly. He had developed a slight cough since being out in the cold, and he knew being in a damp, underground cell wasn’t doing him any favors. Whether it was the dreams, the probable hypothermia, or the stress from being held prisoner, Newt’s health was tanking.

They reached the atrium, which was packed full of worshippers, all in dark robes and holding glowing, blue jars. If Newt thought there were a lot of cult members the last time he was in this room, this time there were even more. It seemed he had been right about new arrivals, because they were packing the aisles, lined up against the wall where there wasn’t room. The room had a palpable energy of anticipation that thrummed louder when the four led Newt in.

No one spoke, yet somehow the room got louder, a strange hum traveling around the room. Every eye in the room was on Newt, and he shivered. They led Newt up to the altar where there was a huge brass ring embedded in the floor. They attached the chain at Newt’s wrists to the ring. It had a short give, and Newt was forced to sink to his knees, the cold floor giving him a chill.

Ciaran entered the room, his face daubed with blue paint. He looked down at Newt and smiled. Newt could feel his heart begin to race. He didn’t like any of this one bit, and the thought of what he was here for sent a jolt of fear through him.

Everyone took their places, and Ciaran stood at the podium behind Newt. Like the first few times, Ciaran began to speak like this ceremony was a regular sermon, complete with points where the audience joined in.

“It’s a corrupt world we live in, brothers and sisters.” Ciaran said, his hands outstretched. The room hummed in agreement. “We destroy and pollute our world, but when our saviors come along to finish what we started, there were those who drove them back. We have felt the displeasure of our gods. I have, and I know all you have as well.” There was scattered nodding in the audience.

Newt thought about his dreams of crushing pressure, multitudes of Kaiju trying to press through the Breach. He shivered. These people were more spot on than they thought.

“In times such as these, waiting for our gods to reclaim their rightful place, there can understandably be some doubt, some wavering of faith. Do not fret, followers! I see some of you look uncomfortable. It is only natural, we are only human, fallible and weak.”

Ciaran looked off to the side and nodded to Pietro, who came forward, holding a large chalice filled with an unknown liquid. “I know how difficult it is to maintain faith in almost impossible circumstances. I’ve brought you something tonight to renew your confidence in our cause, instill enthusiasm for the coming days.”

Ciaran stepped out from behind the podium and stood next to Newt, still looking out at the congregation. Pietro came to stand on the other side. Newt tested the give of his manacles, but he was clearly going nowhere.

“Scientists tell us that the mind is able to recall information best when in a similar state that it learned the information in the first place. Thanks to modern marvels, this liquid is able to manipulate the mind into returning to a state of high arousal, adrenaline, and mental receptivity. Similar to the effects of a Drift.”

Ciaran smiled and Newt froze. He realized where this was going. They were going to make him drink whatever was in the flask which would open his mind to a Drift-like state, which, in his case, would connect him with the Kaiju hive mind. He wasn’t sure he was ever disconnected after the battle in Hong Kong, and now they’re strengthening the connection.

“Let’s see what our prophet has to tell us.” Newt started struggling immediately, but before he could stop them, they forced him to drink the dark liquid in the flask. He involuntarily swallowed, and they stepped back. Newt spat some of it out in anguish, but it was too late. He had already drunk most of it.

He wiped his mouth desperately, as if that would stop it. Before he knew it, his headache began throbbing in time with his frenzied heartbeat. He cried out, digging his palms into his temples as if pressure would stop it. The pain coming from his head seemed to center somewhere around his left eye, and it kept getting worse and worse until he thought his head might split open.

Suddenly and without warning, the pain stopped, just like that. For the first time in days, his mind was clear. Newt opened his eyes warily, not prepared for what he was seeing. His eyes opened wide, and he gaped forward. Around the edges of his vision, Newt could still see the altar room and the audience, overlayed like ghosts on his vision. However, somehow he could see _through_ them, through the walls and rooms and people to the ocean outside. The deep waves he had heard for days were now right in front of him. He could see the spray hitting the walls outside at high tide, could almost feel the salt on his skin.

He was moving across the water next. Although he could see the miles of ocean go past, waves crashing over his head, he didn’t feel any of it. The cold, hard floor under his knees and palms still grounded him in the present, although all his other senses were engaged in this move across the water. He could feel hear a buzzing call in his eardrum, one that told him to _come, come now come faster where are you stay together come here_.

The water churned above the Breach, heaving under the reverberations of something trying to get through. He sunk through the water, and he was scared, his panic was thumping in his head, in his heart, in his fingers. This was fading, instead the hive mind was waiting. It wanted him to _come closer come here open the breach openit open the breach come closer come here_.

Newt sank.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermann shot up from sleep almost instantly, a strangled gasp stirring Mako and Raleigh from sleep.

“What’s wrong? Hermann, what’s wrong?” Mako’s worried voice reached Hermann as if from far away. His heart was slamming against his ribcage and he was sweating and shivering all at once.

Hermann couldn’t have told her even if he tried. He was feeling sensations that weren’t his own, panicked fear that wasn’t his, and a buzzing hum at the back of his mind of still more minds. He felt an urge to walk outside, and he got to his feet; in his dazed movement his leg barely hindered him at all.

Hermann walked slowly through the base. He hadn’t even bothered to put on a jacket, and he seemed like he was sleepwalking, although he looked fully cognizant. His face was pale, his pupils blown wide, and he was panting slightly, as if he was expending quite a bit of energy.

Raleigh and Mako followed him slowly, unsure of what to do.

“Should we shake his shoulders or something?” Raleigh asked in a whisper. Mako shrugged, her worried eyes locked on the slowly ambling figure.

Hermann reached the doorway and pulled it open as if it weighed nothing, although even Raleigh had a tough time wrestling it open.

The silver moonlight stretching out over the snowy plains and iron-gray sea hit the ground, mixing with the slate gray of the concrete the old Shatterdome was made out of. Hermann’s footsteps sounded on the pavement as he walked slowly toward the edge of the observation deck.

Raleigh made to stop Hermann from walking out farther, but Hermann stopped at the edge, gazing out into the ocean with a dazed look on his face.

“They’re out there.” He muttered almost under his breath. He felt like there was something monumental out there for him to experience, but he was just separated from seeing the full picture by a thin curtain, like when he was this close to unlocking the answer to a mathematical equation.

There were humming voices at the back of his head, but he didn’t understand what they were saying. Their message was drowned out by the panic he felt, the cold that wasn’t his.

As the buzzing hum seemed to center more around the ocean in front of him, Hermann felt the more familiar panic come into focus. He knew whose emotions he was feeling. Newton. The manic, almost out of control emotional state was one he had felt before.

The buzzing of the hive mind faded but Hermann was still tapped into feelings that were not his own. He watched in vague confusion as the ocean tipped sideways in front of him.

Mako and Raleigh rushed forward as Hermann collapsed in front of them, his cane tumbling out of his hand and his eyes slumping closed.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ciaran and the others watched in shock at what was happening to Newton in front of them. Ciaran had dropped his aura of mysticism and was standing by the wayside. Even he was surprised.

Within a few seconds of drinking the blue potion, Newton had stopped struggling, stopped doing much of anything. He stilled completely, eyes trained on the audience but seeing right through them. Every attempt to get his attention was unsuccessful. Newt’s face turned pale and his breathing shallow. He was far away and could clearly not hear a word they were saying.

After almost ten minutes with no change in his cognizance, Ciaran was about to give up on what had been, ultimately, a long shot. He stepped up to the altar, but just as his foot made contact, Newt’s head snapped back and he let out a gasp, all the air rushing out of his lungs all at once. He began convulsing violently, the tendons on his neck standing out in dark lines. Natasha and Pietro stepped forward hastily to do something, but Ciaran held them back, fascinated. He had to know whether Newton would actually make contact with the Kaiju or whether the drink they had given him was killing him.

Newt was beginning to let out strangled shrieks, his wide eyes looking sightlessly up at the ceiling. The chains around his wrists were keeping him from getting far, and he writhed where he had kneeled, the pain evident for the audience.

Ciaran glanced at the witnesses in the room. Many of them, even the most devout of his followers, looked uncomfortable with their inaction, but Ciaran waited, hoping for something else to replace the mindless convulsions.

Ciaran’s hopes were realized. Newt’s convulsions stopped all of a sudden and he flipped over, the palms of his hands slamming down onto the ground in front of him so hard that some of the audience flinched.

Newt’s pupils were blown so wide there barely seemed to be any white to his eyes at all, lending him a terrifying appearance. His neck stretched and his face distended, mouth lolling open. His head clicked from side to side, as if he were taking in the audience. Ciaran decided to try and communicate.

“Newton?” He asked, walking up the altar in front of Newt and trying to give off an aura of authority. Newton’s chin jutted forward, and he inhaled, like he was breathing in a scent. Newt seemed to stare Ciaran down, and although their faces were at an equal height, Newt’s mouth curled in an inhuman sneer of contempt that shook even Ciaran Flood. They were looking right at each other, and Ciaran could tell that Newt, or whatever was in Newt now, could see him. He was being observed, maybe even catalogued.

A rusty screech emerged from Newt’s mouth, like he was trying to force words out of his mouth but couldn’t get his tongue around the syllables.

“ _Huuuuuuuuumaaaaaaaaaaaaan_ ,” finally emerged from the mouth of Newt. “ _Why are we in this tiny body?_ ”

Ciaran was frozen for a moment, struck silent by the first instance of contact. “ My name is Ciaran Flood. We are the Cult of the Kaiju. We wanted to contact you, to tell you what was to come. You’re using the intermediary body of our prophet to-”

“ _Proooophet_ ,” The creature inside of Newt said contemptuously, the sharp sound of the last syllable cutting off Flood’s flow of words. The voice forcing its way out of Newt’s mouth seemed to echo, the rasping bark sounding unable to be produced by human vocal cords. “ _You try to keep us out. Let us back_.” The Newt-thing’s voice was annoyed, angry.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Ciaran said, almost desperately. “We are trying our hardest to open the Breach again. With the help of sympathetic parties, we have built machinery in order to open the Breach and allow you to come back.”

“ _Machiinnesss.._ ” The things in Newt hissed. “ _We see those in this thing’s head. We see many things, we see metal things coming to kill us, to hurt us, seal us in.._ ”

“No!” Ciaran shouted, trying to get this conversation back on track. “The Jaeger program is what we’re fighting against. There aren’t any Jaeger pilots left to stop you. We’ve paved the path for you.”

The thing bursting at the seams of Newt’s mind sighed, the throat-deep rattle sounding enough like an attack of Kaiju blue that some people in the room tensed. “ _With or without you, Karlenflood. Your admiration is nothing. We will destroy you all the same_.”

The thing in Newt’s body tried to move forward, hampered by the manacles. It was hunched on Newt’s haunches, moving predatorily from side to side. Frustrated at its lack of movement, the thing rested down on the ground, breath wheezing out and eyes rolling. It snapped its teeth and then its eyes rolled back and Newt’s body collapsed, breathing shallowly. His eyes were closed and his nose was bleeding..

Absolute silence lasted in the room. Nobody knew how to react to what they had just witnessed, including Natasha and Pietro. Ciaran looked at Newton’s prone body for a while and smiled. He turned back to the congregation, spreading his hands.

“I think the authenticity of what we have seen tonight speaks for itself. Within a week, two at the most, we will have the Breach open, and the Kaiju will arrive in earnest.” Ciaran smiled serenely, as if he had just announced his plan to build a pool in his backyard.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermann huffed, irritated at the light streaming down and blocking his vision. He put one hand up, shading it against the late afternoon light glaring off of his blackboard. He reached down to grab a piece of chalk, until he remembered. There shouldn’t be any sunlight shining on his blackboard from the Shatterdome lab.

He spun around, realizing he was standing on grass. His wall-long, three-deep blackboard was standing with no support on the lawn of his childhood home. His real home would be occupied, his mother walking through the garden or his father reading the newspaper on the front porch, hired help keeping up the garden. Here there was nobody, the birds chirping and sun shining on an empty house.

Hermann last remembered falling asleep cold and tired in Alaska. He must be dreaming. He was about to explore more of the lawn when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“I give it a good four minutes before you start complaining about the spatial dimensions of our dream world.” Hermann spun around to see Newt standing in the grass, glasses reflecting the glare from the sun, with his hands in his pockets.

“Newton!” Hermann breathed, rushing forward as if to embrace him. However, he remembered himself and stopped moving, drawing to a halt right in front of Newt. He was smiling and looked remarkably well, calm and healthy. “Are you alright?”

Newt shrugged, rolling up his sleeves to reveal his forearm tattoos. “Probably. Probably not. Who knows?”

Hermann’s eyes narrowed, and his eyes roamed over Newton, trying to find a hint of injury. “What does that mean?”

Newt laughed, his voice loud in this almost silent space. “Yeah, I’m not the ‘real’ Newt. I’m more like the shitty trial version you download for free so you don’t have to cough up the dough for the real software.”

Hermann looked disappointed. “So this is just a dream. You are just a figment of my sleep-addled brain.”

“I wouldn’t say that!” Dream-Newt said cheerfully. “The real Newt is in here somewhere. This is his head, after all.

Hermann looked around, surprised. “I am in Newton’s mind?”

“Well, yours and Newt’s, I guess. It’s like dream sharing, but way more intense. I mean, you’ve felt that stuff on the horizon, right? Even I know about that stuff.”

Both Newt and Hermann turned to look into the distance. The bounds of Hermann’s childhood home stopped abruptly a few yards away, and there was roiling clouds and lightning on the horizon.

Hermann stepped forward and grabbed Newton’s forearm, much to both their surprise. The urgency of the situation seemed to lessen Hermann’s aversion to physical contact.

“How do we find the real Newton? I need to talk to him. Perhaps he could tell us where he is, if he’s-” _If he’s alright_ , Hermann was going to say, although he stopped himself. He wasn’t sure why, since this was a dream. Force of habit, he supposed.

Dream-Newt turned and pointed to where their small slice of dream world disappeared in a roil of clouds. “We walk.”

They passed through the barrier of clouds, and Hermann braced himself for something dramatic, but they just emerged onto a long stretch of beach, the sand dunes rolling gently until the horizon disappeared again. He did not have his cane in this dream, and muscle memory caused him to want to hold onto the closest thing, which happened to be Newt. He stopped himself again, looking over at Newt.

After a fortnight of imagining the worst-case scenario for Newton, he couldn’t get past the Newton walking beside him, calm and purposeful. Hermann frowned, and tried to remind himself that this was not really Newton.

Hermann was struck by a sudden thought, and broke the silence during their walk. “If we are in Newton’s mind, then are you part of Newton’s mind or mine?”

“I’m like, your dream guide, dude. Total mythological bullshit. I think I exist because we’re in Newt’s head, but I’m like, reflected back onto your perceptions. I guess you could say, I’m not a real person, I’m just here to serve a purpose your unconscious mind needs fulfilled.” Newt said, scuffing his feet in the sand in a distinctly Newt-like manner.

Hermann scoffed. “That’s absolutely ridiculous. The theory of the significance of dreams in the Jungian and Freudian state of thinking is sensational, misinformed nonsense.”

Newt grinned, punching Hermann lightly on the shoulder. “Now _that’s_ the Hermann we all know and love.”

The shade of their bickering brought a lump to Hermann’s throat. He let the conversation drop, hoping to reach the real Newton as soon as possible.

“How do you know where we’re going?” Hermann asked Dream-Newt. He pointed towards the bank of clouds above them.

“I’m going towards wherever there’s trouble. Sure, we could hang around in the calm parts of Newt’s skull, but the only thing we’ll find there is his memories from middle school. And that’s probably something nobody needs to see.”

They passed through another bank of clouds and now were walking through a university library, filled with books but no students. Hermann recognized it as the place where he and Newton first met, introduced through a mutual colleague. With no warning, a thunderstorm blew through outside and the windows shattered. Hermann jerked to the side and ducked behind a bookshelf to protect himself. Newt stayed in the spray of glass, remaining untouched by the flying debris.

“I think we’re getting closer.” Newton said breathlessly. This reaction, at least, was accurate to the real Newton. He was always stupidly attracted to danger.

They opened the front doors and walked into the next place. It was nighttime, and they were walking past a series of neon-lit bars with loud music seeping from under the street. Hermann did not recognize any of the landmarks, and realized this must be part of Newton’s memories. A heavy wind was blowing, the clouds sparking and spinning but not splitting apart yet.

“You know, I was in a band, yeah? Maybe one of these bars is where I used to play.” Newt offered, lifting his hands to play air guitar, humming an off-key guitar lick. He got really into it, closing his eyes for added effect. Hermann found himself smiling despite himself.

“I miss you,” He blurted out before he had time to think about it.

Newt stopped playing air guitar and looked sidelong at Hermann, but said nothing.

“The lab is too quiet without you, I can’t get any work done. I had a breakthrough the other day, I need merely apply the Fibonacci sequence as the missing variable. I turned around to tell you, but you weren’t there. I’m afraid this is all horribly sentimental and quite unlike me, and you’ll have to forgive me, Dr. Gesizler, I’m not normally this incoherent, but I care about you, and as every day goes by, I just don’t know what I’ll do if I find you and you’re hurt or dead.” Hermann finished this rant breathlessly, with the discomfort that came after any disclosure of genuine emotion.

Newt didn’t answer him for a few moments, hands in his pockets, and Hermann watched helplessly, wondering if he had made a mistake.

“I think that’s probably something you should tell the real Newt, dude,” Dream-Newt added finally, before stepping through another bank of clouds. Hermann watched him disappear and then followed quickly after.

Hermann and Newton emerged from the latest barrier and were immediately blown over by a strong wind. Here it was raining, the gale almost sideways. The area was lit by lightning, and Hermann realized he was face to face with an enormous ribcage, buried halfway in the ground and being picked over by vultures.

Newt reached out a hand to help Hermann up, and he took it reluctantly. By the time he was tenuously standing, the rain had stopped, the sun shining through the patchy clouds. However, lightning still flashed, and rolling thunder could still be heard overheard.

Newt didn’t need to tell him, Hermann knew they were close. As they rounded the corner of the ribcage, and entire field of Kaiju carcasses was revealed, stretching out as far as the eye could see. Some were full-body, recently massacred, flesh still rotting off of massive bones, while many were only skeletons.

Hermann’s eyes were wide and Newt was silent as they passed through this graveyard. Far off, Hermann could hear the heaving bodies of more creatures trying to get to land, the ocean writhing in their frustration.

Near some of the still-rotting Kaiju bodies, there were acidic pools of Kaiju Blue surrounding them, reminding Hermann of the danger from these creatures, that they were designed and grown to be weapons.

“It’s sort of sad, isn’t it?” Newt said, looking down at the nearest body. “I mean, they had to go, of course. But, this much death isn’t fair when they’re so beautiful.”

Hermann looked at Newt, standing alone in the center of a boneyard of primordial creatures. He looked so small. Sometimes he forgot the fascination Newton felt for the creatures he fought so hard to destroy. He knew that it must have been difficult for him to separate his obsessive interest in the Kaiju with the work he knew he had to do stopping them.

Newt was about to say something else when the sky above them grew dark with clouds again. Dream-Newt looked over Hermann’s shoulder and turned pale.

“Oh no,” He said. Hermann blinked and Newton was gone.

Hermann spun around, expecting to see a hulking Kaiju slipping around the corner of the skeletons, its fluorescent blue tongue dripping acid.

Instead, he saw Newton, standing ramrod straight and staring at him. Instead of the calm and uninjured dream guide who had been leading him around, this Newt was bruised, terrified, and filthy. His glasses were missing and his clothes were ripped. This time, Hermann knew this was really Newton.

“Newton!” He shouted, trying to get Newt’s attention. As he got closer, Hermann saw Newt was dripping wet, drops of water sliding down to form a puddle around his feet. He was trembling, eyes flitting back and forth as if expecting to see something come after him. Actually, Hermann could hear the far-off noises of Kaiju fighting get closer. They were following Newton.

Hermann didn’t know how to get Newton’s attention. His knuckles were white, fists clenched so hard it looked like his fingers were like to break.

Hermann called Newt’s name again, and this time, his eyes made contact, and he looked dazedly at Hermann, not seeming to recognize him.

Slowly, recognition dawned, cognition evident in his eyes. “Hermann?” He said slowly, sounding like he was surfacing from something deep. “You made fun of my jacket in the snow.”

His words were slow and halting, but Hermann was glad to hear recognition. “That sounds like me. We’re trying to find you, Newton. Where are you? Anything you can tell us would be helpful.”

Hermann’s words were cut off by the intensity of the storm above them and the cracking roll of something scaling the skeletons nearest to them. Hermann could see a huge claw scale the top of their row, and he stepped backward despite himself.

Newt began talking so fast that it was almost difficult to understand what he was saying. “They’ve got a machine and they’re coming out of the ocean, it’s not closed, and it’s really cold here, Hermann. I’m cold.”

This was the last jumbled thing Newt made out before disappearing behind a cloud of dust. Hermann cried out and reached after him, but the next thing he knew he was awake in the Alaskan Shatterdome again, Mako and Raleigh hovering around him asking him questions, their concerned voices barely penetrating the haze.

Hermann reached down to touch his nose. He drew his hand away to see blood. He had a nosebleed.


	10. When In Rome

Herc and Tendo landed on the Alaskan Shatterdome’s helicopter pad, pulling in over the grey tide. Almost before Tendo had powered down the blades, three figures came running out of the base, stopping just short of the spinning blades. Tendo recognized Hermann’s uneven gait as he worked to be the first person to them as they hopped down from the helicopter.

It had been a long two days waiting for Herc and Tendo to return from Anchorage. Hermann had awoken from his dream almost incoherent, shaking and mumbling things about Kaiju boneyards and Newton. Once he had calmed down and told them about his dream, they were shocked, but knew that there was nothing they could do until their scouting team returned.

Herc and Tendo had just stepped past the reach of the blades when Hermann stepped forward impatiently.

“Well?” He demanded.

“We might have a lead, Dr. Gottlieb. Can I sit down first?” Herc grumbled, stomping his feet when they pulled the outer door shut behind them.

As they walked back to the only heated room in the base, Tendo related what they had found out in Anchorage. Hermann nodded and insisted that they leave right away.

“Can I at least take my boots off, sit a while?” Herc grumbled, stretching out his cramped legs with a grunt.

“I don’t think we have time for that,” Hermann added, telling Herc and Tendo about his dream. Tendo looked a little skeptical, but Herc knew how close the connection between drift partners was, and he was willing to believe that Newt was communicating with Hermann.

“Alright, we’ll get a move on today. But I think we’re all forgetting something. There’s two parts to this Breach-opening machine business. If we go running off to find the transmitting device we’re leaving the receiving device free. We need to go after both.” Herc sighed, bringing to a halt everyone’s packing through the room.

“We don’t have any reinforcements, sir. You said the Council won’t help us.” Tendo said, rolling up his unused bedroll.

“They won’t. We’re dealing with this thing on our own, which means we need to split up. If we have two groups going after the devices, chances are one of us will get them taken out. We actually have no idea when these people plan on setting this thing off.”

“Soon.” Hermann said gravely. Since his dream-sharing with Newt, he had been much more tuned in to the vestiges of the Drift, and he could feel the impatience of the hive mind, pushing against their dimensional barrier, ready to emerge.

After a great deal of arguing and shuffling around, Herc and Tendo decided to go to the Pacific plate and find the receiving device, and, maybe, Michael Harmon as well. In a few hours, the two of them were taking the helicopter out over the bay, back the way they had come a week ago.

Mako, Raleigh, and Hermann were left in the base to go after Ciaran Flood and Newton. Raleigh went rummaging around in the garage and found a military vehicle still working and a leftover store of gasoline to power it. Two hours later, the three of them were packed into the truck with their luggage, leaving the empty PPDC base behind them. Raleigh took a moment, looking back at the place he had shared with his brother. It was better this way, leaving it as empty as they found it. The ghosts of Yancy and Gipsy Danger were staying behind as they moved forward.

As they drove away from the base, Hermann’s leg was jiggling and he looked nervously into the oncoming snow. He felt more at peace now that they were on the move. After two weeks of waiting, they were finally closing in on Newt.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a long night and day of driving, their truck finally passed the sign for Bethel, Alaska. Raleigh leaned forward in his seat, trying to see more than 40 feet in front of their truck. After only a few hours of driving, the snow had started driving right into their headlights. The entire week they had been at the Shatterdome, the air around them was clear, but they were driving into a storm now.

Raleigh tried turning on the radio, and the only station they could hear was filled with static. After 45 minutes of listening to some strange ukelele music, a DJ came on the air and informed the residents of Bethel, Alaska that the storm cell hovering above the town for days was apparently slated to stay hovering for the foreseeable future.

Five minutes after passing the sign for Bethel, the vague outline of buildings appeared to the sides of the road, and they could see cars parked by the curb. Hermann breathed on his window, rubbing off the condensation and frost to see a small general store go past, followed by a beauty salon and an outdoors supply store.

Raleigh pulled to a stop, seeing the sign for a mom ‘n’ pop diner. He turned around in his seat to face Mako and Hermann, who had their coats zipped up to their chins. Even in the heated car, the cold was still managing to get in.

“We haven’t eaten for hours, we should take a pit stop to freshen up and eat something. Then we can ask someone where the fishing outpost is. We aren’t going to find anything in this blizzard. We might drive right past it and not notice.” Raleigh said, getting out of the car.

Hermann stepped out and immediately slipped on the powdery layer of snow. Dropping his cane, he clutched to the doors’ edge in desperation, managing to regain his balance. Mako came around the car and offered him her arm. He bristled at the offer of help, but looked around at the gusting wind and patches of ice under the snow. He took her arm, walking unsteadily across the sidewalk into the heated interior of the diner.

Raleigh let the door close behind him, shrugging off his huge jacket and shaking off the snow like a golden retriever would shake off water. He slid into a booth, sighing at the comfortable seating that he hadn’t felt in days.

Hermann slid into the booth awkwardly behind Mako and leaned across the table.

“I don’t think we have time for this, Mr. Becket. We have no time frame with these people, we should be moving as fast as we can.” He whispered as Raleigh took a look at the menu.

Raleigh looked up, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Hermann, I get that you want to get to Newt as fast as we can, but if we show up to that place freezing and hungry and disorganized, we won’t be helping Newt or taking down that device. We need to take a break before running into the lions’ den here.”

Hermann scoffed, opening his mouth to argue, but Mako interrupted him.

“Raleigh is right, Dr. Gottlieb. Newton will be alright for another hour, but we can’t go on after that drive.” Mako slid a menu to Hermann, nudging it under his hands, and he acquiesced finally, respecting the logic of Mako and Raleigh’s arguments.

Besides family dinners on holidays, this meal at the diner was the longest that Hermann had experienced, and he glanced impatiently at the clock every few minutes. Finally, after paying their bill, Raleigh went to the desk and asked for directions to the fishing outpost. The man there told them how to get there, stating that it was about five miles out of town.

Fighting their way through the ice and snow, the three of them finally pulled up to the outside of the outpost. It looked quiet from the outside, windows impossible to see into from this distance.

Raleigh shrugged, and leaned over to open the door and walk out, but Hermann put a hand on his forearm, looking at the storefront.

“Wait. We can’t just go in there without thinking about this. These people probably know who you two are. Your interviews and picture were broadcast all over the place after the Breach was sealed. If these people truly worship the Kaiju, they are most likely aware of you and most certainly hold a grudge.” Hermann said, looking in turn at Raleigh and Mako.

Mako turned to Raleigh. “He’s right. We can’t just walk in there. They might recognize us.”

Hermann held up a hand. “I, on the other hand, am practically anonymous. They will have little idea who I am. I’m going in myself.”

“Whoa there! Hold on for a second. What are you going to do? What if it’s dangerous in there?” Raleigh said, holding an arm out to stop Hermann from leaving the car.

Hermann squinted at the storefront. “Tendo’s friend said that this place was an outpost for attracting new cult members. I am going to convince these people that we are potential inductees, that we are interested in their, ‘cause’.” He sounded disgusted with the thought, but determined.

“How are you going to do that? What if they don’t believe you?” Raleigh asked.

Hermann shook his head. “Mr. Becket, I have spent the last ten years of my life sharing a lab with the most obsessive Kaiju groupie the world has ever seen. I believe I can summon up a convincing argument.”

“This does not seem like such a good idea,” Mako began, but Hermann was already out of the car and walking unsteadily toward the storefront.

“Should we go after him?” Raleigh asked uncertainly.

Mako shook her head. “Hermann is our best chance. We need to trust him.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermann’s entrance into the fishing outpost was met with the soft tinkling of a bell, as if it wanted to alert the owners that someone was entering, but not draw any attention from the customer. Hermann wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he entered the musty shop, but it was certainly nothing as ordinary as actual fishing supplies.

A small display of ice fishing houses lined one wall, and a collection of fishing poles and lures decorated the other three wood-paneled walls. There was a long counter alongside the left wall leading to a small backroom, but other than that, the place seemed to be an entirely convincing fishing supply store.

Hermann walked to the counter, pretending to observe the lures under glass and waited for someone to come out. With a sigh as if he was being interrupted from important work, a short, broad man emerged from the back office, carrying a huge tome with him, which he dropped on the counter.

“Why the hell would you want to go fishing in awful fucking weather like this?” The man grumbled, sounding entirely like an annoyed shop owner and nothing like an undercover cult member. Hermann wasn’t sure what _that_ would sound like, but nothing like this man.

Hermann hesitated, not sure how he should proceed. Despite his show of confidence, Hermann actually had little experience in deception. He didn’t know whether coming out and stating his intentions directly would earn the man’s respect, or whether he was expected to put on a show with veiled references.

Hermann decided to go for straightforward. He had never been one for secret messages.

“I don’t want to go fishing now, which is why I’m here in your shop.” Hermann tried, testing the waters. The shop owner looked so genuinely confused that Hermann was sure they were trying the wrong place, that Tendo’s contact had been mistaken.

“What do these things look like to you? Window cleaning supplies?” The man said, gesturing towards the fishing paraphernalia.

Hermann smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring and confident manner. “I’m not here for your fishing supplies. I’m here because a friend of mine told me to come find you if they were interested in the Cult of the Kaiju.”

The man’s eyes shut down, and Hermann felt his stomach lurch. This was the wrong approach. Straight and direct was not the way to get into this place, and now he had blown it.

“We don’t have people like that around here,” The man said dismissively.

“I’m not some kind of gawker or cheat,” Hermann said, trying to sound angry. With what had been going on the past couple of weeks, it wasn’t hard. “If I was, do you think I would have been directed to your door?”

The man studied him for a good long moment, but Hermann didn’t know what he was looking for. “Hypothetically, if this were such a place, you’d have to tell me a password to get anywhere.”

Hermann froze, a password not being part of the information they had received. His probability of guessing the correct one was very low, and even if there was a requirement for a password, the time had probably already passed.

He tried to look knowledgeable instead of stumped. “There's no password. I know Ciaran Flood, I know the Kaiju are very close to coming through the Breach again. I’ve been driving for hours and hours, and I would appreciate being told where to go from this godforsaken shop. There’s not time to be wasted.”

Hermann hoped name dropping Ciaran Flood would give him the credence he needed to convince this man, and that he wouldn’t be asked questions about the man.

The man finally nodded. “I’ve gotten a couple dozen people coming in the past two weeks, but none of them knew Ciaran. Tell your friends in the car to come in. I think I have something for you.”

Hermann’s heart jumped into his throat at the mention of Mako and Raleigh, but he leaned out the doorway and waved them in. The two of them entered warily and the three of them faced the man. Hermann’s fists were clenched, figuring that if they knew who they were, this would be the point where they would be ambushed.

However, nothing of the sort happened. The shop owner beckoned them across the counter and into the back. Hermann’s eyebrows shot up at the sight of the back. Where the front was made to look like a regular fishing store, the back was clearly a base. There was a wall of vehicle keys with numbers next to them and a computer monitor with a rotating view of all sides of the shop, including the street. There was a large map laid out on the table before them with heavy paperweights holding it down.

Once they were gathered around the table, the man hit his finger on the map, showing a thick blue line running from Bethel, Alaska 40 miles northwest to a small black dot.

“If you can find it, you can join us.” The man said gruffly, having delivered this speech before. “If you can’t, your faith is not strong enough. You can study the map as much as you want. When you’re ready to leave, you may take one of our vehicles. I’m afraid you have to leave all your possessions behind, including cell phones or any other electronic device.”

The three of them looked nervously at each other, but then nodded and handed over their devices. They hadn’t been getting good reception up here, and they had to maintain the image of malleability.

Car keys were placed into Raleigh’s hands and the man nodded out the back to a lot with a few stray cars. “Good luck. And may the Precursors be upon us.”

They repeated the phrase, hoping that was the right response, and walked outside in the driving wind again, Mako’s arm supporting Hermann.

The heating system in the car was even worse than in the truck they came in on, and the sound of huffing breaths and chattering teeth accompanied their 40-mile ride.

Mako and Raleigh had memorized the directions, and were reciting them back and forth to each other repeatedly to keep them fresh in their minds. Hermann was almost sure they made a few wrong turns at the rare crossroads they passed, only marked by the top of a street pole barely making it out of the snow.

The last 15 miles of their drive was slow because of the deep, unplowed snow and their car’s terrible snow tires. Raleigh gritted his teeth and kept moving, knowing that if he paused the car at all, they may not be able to work up any momentum to keep going.

Finally, after what seemed to be almost half a day, the wide sight of the gray ocean came into view on the left side. Their car began to dip down as they drove down a gentle incline, towards the bay.

Hermann leaned forward in his seat, pointing at a barely visible landmark in the distance.

“Is that it? That looks like a building to me.” Hermann was right. The low edges of a compound of buildings came into view, many sinking below the rock of the bay’s cliffs, where the tide pounded against it, ocean spray coming up over the cliffs to freeze the roof of the buildings even more. This was a desolate place, and they would have thought the buildings were uninhabited except for the faint sight of a chimney emitting smoke on the far side.

They pulled up to the outside of the complex, a large gate blocking the rest of the way. Before they could wonder if they should get out and shout, a hooded figure pushed the gate open and waved them through.

Once they got through, they were surprised to see another carload of people being greeted by more hooded figures. Those people were ushered inside, and as Mako, Raleigh, and Hermann got out of their car, the person who had opened the gate for them appeared beside them, beckoning them in wordlessly.

The interior of this building was a small, low room with a dirt-packed floor and wood-panelled walls. The floor sloped down to reveal more below them. There were half a dozen cult members in the entryway, shoving the new arrivals against the wall and searching them, asking frenzied questions in hushed voices.

Hermann backed up hastily, but the closest hooded figure shoved him toward the wall, running his hands over him, checking all of Hermann’s pockets and taking out all his accoutrements. Hermann was still wearing his huge parka, and this took a while. He could see Raleigh and Mako receiving the same treatment next to him.

It took him a moment to realize that the whispering behind him was questions he was supposed to be answering. A series of rapid-fire quizzing on the Kaiju followed. Hermann was thrown off by the unexpected quiz, but he had absorbed more than he through Newton by osmosis, and he found with surprise he knew quite a bit about the biology of the Kaiju.

The hands searching him reached his knee, where they paused. Hermann cringed in pain and tried to stay still. Finally, the searching was done, and he was spun back around.

“Why are you here?” Asked the man in the hood. The hallways was so dimly lit that Hermann still could not see his face, only the shadowy movement of lips.

Hermann thought back to his shared dream, the sight of Newton standing alone in a graveyard of Kaiju remains. “Because it’s devastating to see so many beautiful creatures torn apart with so much enthusiasm. And then their murderers are celebrated afterwards. It’s sickening.”

The man in the hood looked at him silently, but then stepped back. Hermann hoped this meant that he had passed the test. Around him, the other cult members were finishing searching and questioning the other new arrivals. Nearest to the downward slope of the floor, a man and a woman stood facing the rest of these people. They were the only ones not wearing hoods, and were clearly in charge. Hermann saw now that the fishing shop was merely a screening process, but this here was the real welcoming party.

Finally, all of the cult members stepped back and nodded. Only then did the man and woman step forward. The man spoke, his voice colored by a faint Italian accent.

“Welcome. You all have different reasons for being here, and yet it is amazing how every single one of you have made your way here, to our last chance of salvation. You eight are most likely the last arrivals. Our work here is nearly done, but it is wonderful that you are here to witness our greatest triumph.” The man and woman smiled in unison, and Hermann shivered. He glanced back at Mako and Raleigh who looked similarly concerned.

“Please, follow us.” The woman said, beckoning them forward. After descending the steep ramp, which Hermann felt through his knee in every step, the walls around them turned to dark stone, small sconces of light in the walls lighting their way.

More people that Hermann would have thought possible passed on either side of the new party, and Hermann desperately searched each face for a sign of Newton, however unlikely his appearance walking free would be. Everyone they passed avoided eye contact with the man and the woman, daring to sneak small glances at the other eight. They were all dressed in robes over warm woolen sweaters, and people bustled every which way on presumably important tasks, although the place was eerily silent.

They passed the open door of a huge atrium where the cave walls expanded, and Hermann glanced inside, seeing rows of people with their arms raised silently, looking at something out of sight. He felt a chill, and his uneasy feeling only got worse the more of the place they toured.

The man and woman were telling the group about the structure of the building complex, and where everything was located, but Hermann was having a hard time concentrating. The place was too quiet, and every time someone came around the corner before them, he jumped involuntarily. A short man with dark hair came walking the other way, and Hermann started, holding out hope for a moment before recognizing that it was not Newton.

He shook his head, trying to keep a good head on his shoulders. _You’re being ridiculous, Hermann_ , he chided himself. For the rest of the tour, he worked on concentrating on what the people were saying, but it was a very short walk down a long hallway to a series of open doors through which dormitories lay, long rows of beds that stretched all the way down the hall.

The man and woman, Pietro and Natasha they said their names were, led the group down a row until they reached the end, where there were a series of unoccupied beds.

“Take a few minutes to get settled in,” Natasha said to the group. “We will be having worship in about an hour, and you should all be there. It’s wonderful to see Ciaran speak.”

One of the people in the other group spoke up for the first time. “Will the prophet be there as well? We heard he inserted slices of Kaiju brain into his own, so he’s personally connected to the hive mind.”

“I heard he traveled through the Breach himself and communed with the Kaiju intimately.” Another one of the group said.

Hermann bristled, feeling the need to correct their inaccuracies about Newton, but held himself back.

Pietro smiled, the gesture not reaching his eyes. “He might be making an appearance. He’s had some interesting things to say recently.”

As Natasha and Pietro walked away and the other group left to claim their own beds, Hermann’s fists clenched, and he could feel his anger rising.

“Did you hear how they were talking about Newton? We need to go to that worship ceremony.” Hermann said, seething.

Mako and Raleigh shared a glance. “We will go to maintain our cover and see if we can get any more information, but Hermann, even if Newton is there, you have to keep your distance for now.” Mako said.

Hermann frowned. “What do you mean, keep my distance? What has been the point of this entire manhunt if not to help Newton?”

“We are going to help Newt! But we have to be smart about it, which means not running in there and grabbing him or something. That way, we still won’t know where the transmitting device is and we’ll blow our cover. Have you seen how many of these guys there are? They outnumber us, and I don’t really want to get on their bad side too early.” Raleigh said.

Hermann sighed, but he knew they were right. He was never this rash in his decisions. Newton had the tendency of bringing out his most reckless.

An hour later, the three of them joined the stream of people back through the labyrinth of hallways to the huge atrium Hermann had glimpsed before. They filed in with the rest, joining the third row of people in the makeshift pews. Hermann, Mako, and Raleigh looked up in dread at the huge statue of Trespasser standing behind the altar.

Hermann had never heard a room of people so quiet, especially with all this movement. There were no hushed whispers, only shuffling footsteps.

After everyone was settled, the room became even more silent, not even the sound of breathing audible. Hermann glanced over to see Mako take Raleigh’s hand, and him squeeze it comfortingly. Hermann felt lonely and tired after their long trip, but there was a ball of stress under his ribcage at the prospect of seeing Newton.

Finally, a group of three people swept into the hall. Hermann recognized Natasha and Pietro from before, but the third man was a mystery until he took up a position behind the podium. His sharp eyes were familiar from the picture and surveillance video they had seen on Herc’s computer. This was Ciaran Flood, the man in charge of the cult.

Hermann could see why as he began his sermon. He was arresting and dedicated, his voice able to pull in a crowd without a lot of movement. Men like him were always able to convince others of almost anything. Looking at the enraptured faces of the people around him, Hermann understand the pull the man had. Although he disagreed with everything the man said on a humanist, moralistic, and personal level, the ideas he spouted were presented in such a way that if he were less of a driven person, he might be swayed by this man’s speech.

“We are so close, brothers and sisters, to our goal. I know you can all feel them all pressing against their dimensional prison. They want to come where they belong, and we will help them reach that goal. I can see quite a few new faces in the crowd tonight, and that’s good. Our message is reaching others. It gladdens my heart to see that there are at least a few who share our cause.

“Now I know many of you have heard of our prophet. He achieved quite an amazing feat the other day. It’s good to strengthen faith, but also not to let ourselves over to pure sensationalism. As a demonstration before our final ceremony in two days’ time, I have arranged for our prophet to demonstrate his abilities for you all.”

Ciaran stopped speaking as another group entered from the side door. Hermann had to stop his gasp from leaving his mouth and his stomach dropped. Supported between two hooded cult members was Newton, his head drooping and his feet dragging along the ground as they brought him up to the altar. Newton looked incredibly dazed and he barely stayed standing, slumping against one of the people holding him up.

His hands were chained together and his face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot. There was a bruise across one of his cheeks. He didn’t look entirely cognizant, and Hermann was seeing red. He actually took a step forward involuntarily, but Raleigh grabbed his arm quietly and shook his head, warning him off silently.

Hermann looked up at the stage helplessly, feeling sick and useless. He tried to catch Newton’s eye, but he was looking down at the ground and wouldn’t look up.

Hermann missed what Flood was saying in the interim, but started again when one of the men forced Newt’s mouth open and drained a glass of some liquid. Newt was more aware then, and tried to fight them off, but it was too late.

A series of shudders ripped through his body, and the people holding him up stepped back. He started speaking so fast that nobody could understand him, his high-pitched voice mixing with the low notes of something else. He was talking about the ocean and pressure and the plan to spread and destroy and Hermann clenched his fists, leaning on his cane because his bad knee was acting up.

Everything was going a little blurry for Hermann. He could almost see what Newton was seeing, but it was separated by a kind of veil. He felt bile rise in his throat and fought to keep it down. Eventually, Newton’s frantic speech slowed and then stopped, and his limbs went loose as he collapsed to the floor. Nobody broke his fall, and he landed with a sickening thud.

The confusing double vision Hermann had been seeing disappeared, but his headache did not. He could feel the buzz in the distance that was farther away before. Ciaran kept speaking and Newt lay on the ground. Hermann was so blindingly angry it took all his efforts to stay where he was.

After an eternity, Ciaran stopped speaking and the congregation began to file out of atrium. The two people who had brought him in lifted Newt up and dragged him out. By then, Newton was starting to regain consciousness, and he looked around blearily as he left. His head turned and locked with Hermann, and Hermann’s heart lurched, but there was no recognition in his face. His eyes slid right past and they left the room with him.

Hermann could hear the blood pounding in his ears, and he lurched slowly back towards the dormitories. He barely made it into the bathroom before doubling over and vomiting right into the sink.

He was wracked with shudders, and he touched his face. Mixed with the salt of tears was the sluggish flow of his nosebleed starting up again.

Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough, Hermann thought, as he went back to the dormitories, passing the rows of people buzzing with excitement over what they had seen.

Hermann had been awake for nearly an entire day, he was freezing and exhausted, but he couldn’t seem to fall asleep, staring at the ceiling for hours as the long night passed by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! I'm sorry about the 5-day wait for an update! Real life kind of got in the way, and I didn't have any time to write, but I'm back on schedule now, so there should be shorter waits between chapters (although there aren't very many chapters left).


	11. Ten Minutes to Midnight

Hermann was the first one awake the next morning, shaking himself out of a brief sleep filled with dreams he couldn’t remember. He looked over at Mako and Raleigh’s beds, which were pulled close together. They had both turned to face each other in their sleep, their sleeping postures matching each other across the divide.

The first of the cult members began to wake up, stretching and leaving out the big double doors at the end of the hall. Hermann looked at Mako and Raleigh, wondering if he should wake them, but decided it might look suspicious if the three of them went everywhere together.

He looked down at his bedside table to see a pile of clothing left by their sinister welcoming party. Hermann held up a scratchy woolen sweater and a large hood he was expected to wear. In order to blend in, he pulled on the sweater but couldn’t bring himself to wear the hood. It was long and dragged on the ground, and he could just imagine the disaster as his cane caught in the folds.

Hermann made his way out of the room of sleeping people and headed right with everyone else. They all funneled into a huge stone room like the atrium, except this room was filled with rows of tables instead of pews, and a group of people stood at the very end filling bowls with some kind of porridge.

Hermann joined the line and accepted his bowl of colorless slop without enthusiasm. He sat down at a table facing the line, waiting for someone to come for some porridge to go. He knew how dangerous it was, but after last night’s performance, he was not waiting around one second more to find Newton.

A group of three cult members sat down next to him at the table, engaged in discussion.

“When the Kaiju come through the Breach tomorrow, they won’t be waiting around for us. They will radiate outwards as they always have and destroy the population. The masses won’t last more than a few weeks. These are the final days of the human race and we are here to experience it.” One said, scooping porridge into his mouth as he talked.

“But the Kaiju will come for us first, of course. After our devotion, our hard work, they will bless us with destruction before any of the nonbelievers.” Another woman said, her face filled with the light of one secure in her beliefs. Hermann turned away in disgust. The sooner they could get out of here, the better.

After ten minutes of watching the line with no change, Hermann saw Mako and Raleigh enter the room quickly in a panic, scanning the room for him. They made their way over, walking slower again so as not to draw attention.

“You can’t just walk off like that, Hermann! We thought something bad happened to you,” Raleigh said in a hushed whisper, leaning over Hermann’s shoulder so nobody else could hear what he was saying.

“As you can see, Mr. Becket, I have not gone far. I felt it was important to gather information first and foremost.” Hermann said coldly.

“We need to stay together,” Mako added. “We are going to see if we can find the transmitting device. We do not have a lot of time if the ceremony is occurring tomorrow.”

Hermann nodded. “I wish the two of you luck. I am staying here to see if I can find where they are keeping Newton. We will be more efficient if we divide our resources.”

Raleigh didn’t look happy with the new plan. “That’s real dangerous, doc.”

“But more inconspicuous. How suspicious will it seem if three of us go walking around the hallways looking into things we shouldn’t? We are pushing our luck as it is and we need to maintain our cover.” Hermann said. Raleigh still looked unhappy, but Mako gave him a look, and he acquiesced.

“Okay, fine. But we are meeting back up in the dormitories in a few hours. Do not make any moves by yourself, Hermann. I don’t see you cracking anyone over the head with that cane of yours. I don’t want to lose anyone.”

Hermann assented with a nod, and Raleigh and Mako left, turning left at the hallway.

The line for porridge was dwindling, the hall they were in almost full. There were nearly a hundred people in this room, and Hermann wondered how they could possibly all desire the destruction of the human race, how anyone could be so callous.

One of the silent members of the cult entered, face hidden behind a hood. Hermann watched with interest as they bypassed the short line and received a small bowl of porridge with a glass of water. Instead of eating, they took the food and left the room.

Hermann took his untouched bowl and left it by the discard bin, following the man out of the room at a distance. There was a fair amount of activity in the hallways outside, and Hermann felt safe walking behind the hooded figure without drawing attention.

After taking a seemingly endless series of twists and turns, the hooded figure led Hermann to a deserted area of the compound. Hermann slowed way down, making sure to stay behind a corner when the man turned. Staying quiet but moving quickly proved difficult for Hermann, and he was breathing heavily as the hooded figure slowed when he reached a wider hallway.

Hermann peeked around the corner to see the hooded figure walk up to a man sitting in a chair beside one of the closed rooms in the hallway.

“Is he awake now?” The man in the hood asked.

The guard nodded, looking irritated. “He spit in my face and called me a fascist. I think I preferred him when he was delirious.”

The man in the hood shook his head. “Considering the great honor we are about to bestow on him, he should be more grateful.” The guard unlocked the door for him, and the hooded figure entered, closing the door behind him.

Hermann tried to catch a glimpse of the interior of the room, but the angle was all wrong, and the only thing he could see was wall. He waited for a few minutes, but after realizing that the hooded figure would come back out soon and go back the same way he came, Hermann knew he had to get back to the well-traveled part of the complex. He beat a hasty retreat, reciting in his mind the twists and turns to get to this secluded part of the complex.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Now if I were a top-secret piece of machinery, where would I be hiding?” Raleigh muttered under his breath as they went through the hallways, checking all the doors for something promising.

Mako smiled. “Has that technique worked for anyone? Ever?”

Raleigh looked embarrassed. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it, Mako. I don’t have any other great ideas.”

Mako sighed. “Me either.” 

They had been wandering the hallways for close on an hour now, but they were quickly realizing that this place was a maze, more space than it had any business having, rooms and hallways stretching off in every direction. Most were unoccupied, and the ones that seemed important were locked.

In one of the rooms they had passed, the door was slightly ajar, and a group of cult members were gathered around a table, furiously transcribing some words scrawled on pieces of paper into a large tome resting on the wooden table. Mako and Raleigh moved on, knowing that they wouldn’t find anything there.

Eventually the floor sloped upward, and they heard businesslike voices coming from the room up ahead. Mako and Raleigh slowed down, walking on the balls of their feet to be quieter, and slipped into a side room where they could hear what was being said without being seen.

“Now that we have all the logistics of the ceremony tomorrow out of the way, is our transmitter functioning correctly?” Mako and Raleigh recognized Ciaran Flood’s voice and their eyes widened.

“Final tune-ups and functionality is being checked now, sir. All signs seem normal. We will not have any difficulty from a technological point of view.” The woman from yesterday, Natasha, was speaking.

“Good, good. And what about our associates on the Pacific plate? I dislike having to deal with such selfish people, but sometimes the ends justify the means, and Harmon and Guo have excellent connections.” Ciaran said.

“Harmon’s base is fully operational, and Guo tells us that all is functional from their end.” Pietro added.

“Excellent. Then, if we have no more business…” Ciaran said.

“Actually, sir, there was one thing I was hoping to bring up with you.” Pietro said. Mako peeked around the corner. The three of them were seated around a table in a decidedly more modern looking room than the rest of the compound. The soft hum of a computer on their desk provided a background, and in the room next to them the blue glow of another kind of machinery shined through the doorway.

“Some of the congregation have expressed some discomfort to me about the apparent, unwillingness, of Geiszler. These are mainly the hangers-on, none of the truly faithful, but I thought I would let you know.” Pietro said.

Ciaran sighed. “I tried to gain Geiszler’s trust to bypass that roadblock, but he just refuses to see things from our point of view. It won’t matter anyway. We don’t need the weak. By tomorrow, Geiszler will be gone, they will be gone, and we will be gone too. It’s been a long road, but I think we are nearing the end of it.”

The three wrapped up their discussion and then took the ramp back down to the main area of the complex. Mako and Raleigh emerged from their hiding spot, a little shaken, and explored the room. Mako went straight to the desk to see if there were any clues while Raleigh walked over to the adjacent room where the blue light was seeping out of.

“Mako, I think I found it.” Raleigh said. Mako turned and followed him into the room. They looked solemnly at the strange machinery with the slot and the floating tank with the Kaiju claw.

“This is bad, Mako.” Mako nodded and examined the sides and edges of the machine in the center of the room. Nothing on the device was labeled, and she couldn’t figure out what any of the buttons or levers should do.

“Do we just smash it, or…?” Raleigh asked as Mako continued to look stumped.

“That could work, or it could tip off Michael Harmon that something is not right. And with an entire day to go, I don’t want to risk that.” Mako said.

“We need to get hold of the Marshall. We weren’t planning on us losing our phones. We need to find out if they’re on the other end.”

Following Raleigh’s suggestion, the two of them turned to explore the room outside. In one of the desk drawers, Raleigh found a satellite phone charging. Holding his breath that there would be no password, he unlocked the phone and powered it up.

Typing in the number for the Marshall, Raleigh and Mako waited with bated breath for the call to go through, and relaxed when they heard the dialing sound and wait signal.

Finally, someone picked up the phone and they heard the exasperated sound of Herc on the other end.

“If this is one of those toss-heads from the Council, I’d like you to know I am out now doing your job and I would really appreciate some help out here!” Herc’s words were hard to understand as wind was blowing into the speakerphone and everything was indistinct.

“Marshall, it’s us! Me and Mako. We made it in and we found the transmitting device. Have you guys found your device?”

There was a muffled, _Is that Raleigh?_ and a brief scuffle with the satellite phone and then Tendo came on the line.

“Sure, if by ‘found’ you mean we are floating around a giant ocean liner in a little schooner then, yeah, we found it. There is a jet on this aircraft carrier. Who _are_ these people?”

Tendo’s words were cut off and there was another scuffle and Herc got back on the line. “We need to wait for the cover of night to get on this boat without being seen, but we’re working on it. Listen, we need you to wait on taking care of your machinery for at least a couple hours.”

“What? Why?” Raleigh asked as they listened to the wind and soft cursing coming over the phone.

“Because if you disconnect the devices too soon, Harmon might know about it before we get a chance to destroy this piece. You need to give us at least until an hour or two after nightfall to make our move before you make yours.” Herc said.

Mako and Raleigh gave each other a look. Waiting even longer was cutting it pretty closely, but it seemed they had no other choice.

“Give us fourteen hours, then do what you can there. Smash that machine, grab Dr. Geiszler, and get the hell out of there as fast as you can. Come hell or Kaiju, I’ll meet you all back in Hong Kong, and then we’re going to talk a little about what our jobs actually entail as opposed to chasing madmen all over the globe.” Herc’s call cut out abruptly, and Mako and Raleigh were left holding the satellite phone.

Mako and Raleigh returned the room to the exact state they had left it in, and went back to the more recognizable parts of the complex, hoping to find Hermann and wait out the fourteen hours in a safe location.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newt clenched his fists, trying to keep the latest bout of shivering down. Every time they made him drink that blue stuff, coming back from the hive mind was worse and worse. Every muscle hurt, and if he thought he had a headache before, that was nothing compared to the jackhammer currently pounding away at the inside of his skull.

He pulled at the chains around his wrists for the thousandth time, hoping against hope that this would be the time they would loosen. His heart was pounding, terrified about the next time someone would walk through that door wanting something from him.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been since the first time they forced him to drink the blue stuff, but he had awoken from it feeling like he had narrowly escaped drowning. Ever since then was a blue haze, and right now was the clearest he had been since then.

Twice a day, one of the hooded figures came into the room with food. They refused to unchain his hands, and so they fed him, and Newt had to resist the urge to bite their fingers when they got close.

The hive mind was so clear that he could almost distinguish between the Kaiju trying to get through the Breach. All their thought processes were remarkably similar, although he could differentiate between them, which under normal circumstances he would find fascinating, but in his current situation, there was nothing good about it.

A few hours after the last time they brought food, the door opened again, and Newt jumped, pulling his knees up and trying to make himself as small as possible. He saw with a panic that it was Natasha who came in, not some hooded figure, which meant it was time for more of the blue drink.

“Please,” He croaked, long having past the point of being self-conscious about begging, “You can’t make me drink that stuff anymore. I- I can’t do that again.” He wondered if telling her about the bone-breaking, terrifying feeling that came from thousands of Kaiju invading your mind would help, but he doubted it.

Natasha looked at him without pity and sat next to him on the bed. He shifted away from her as much as he could. “We are done with the drink. There are no new arrivals. The big day is tomorrow, and you need to prepare yourself.”

Newt shivered. “For what?”

Natasha’s look was a cold one. “For the sacrificial ceremony. We need to ask you to do something.”

Newt barked out a humorless laugh, savoring the look of anger that flitted across Natasha’s face. “The same way you _asked_ me to join you guys in this luxury hotel of yours? Or the way you asked to drug me and throw me in the snow and lock me up for weeks? _That_ kind of asking?”

He regretted his little outburst when she grabbed his chin, her sharp fingers digging into his skin. “The kind of asking where you don’t say no. The kind where if the next words out of your mouth aren’t ‘Yes, ma’am’ I’m going to break your goddamn kneecaps and drag you to the ceremony tomorrow by your hair. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

He froze, knowing she was perfectly serious. “Yes, ma’am.” He said quietly.

“Good.” She let go of his chin and backed up. “Now, you don’t need to worry about the ceremony tomorrow. Your part is easy.” She smiled predatorily.

“The one thing you do need to do is just keep your mouth shut. I know how much you like to talk, but we need to create the illusion that you’re on board with this whole thing. I can promise you one thing. If you do what you’re told, I can make sure that it’s quick. If not, well...” She left the last part hanging, but Newt didn’t think either way sounded very appealing.

She hovered at the door, looking back at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Newton Geiszler, so you can achieve the one good thing that will come out of your life.”

Only after she left did Newt let himself go, wracking sobs escaping him as much as he tried to keep them back.

One time not long after they had relocated to the Hong Kong Shatterdome, Newt had had one of his bad nights, up in the lab working uselessly on samples that he couldn’t possibly analyze while so hyped up, but he couldn’t possibly sleep, and he could feel the familiar strains of a panic attack coming on, everything seeming too big and monumental to handle.

Hermann had been there, and although he should have gone off to bed hours ago, because of course Newt knew when he usually went to bed, Hermann stayed in the lab. He said he was working and _good God, Dr. Geiszler, not everything revolves around you and your schedule_ , but Newt saw Hermann recycling old equations and doing bookkeeping, nothing that couldn’t wait until the morning. And as much as he _hated_ it and as much as he wanted to hate Hermann, Newt had to admit that Hermann’s presence in the lab brought him down, leveled him out. At the early hour of 3 A.M., Newt began to yawn and was able to go off to bed, and although they never spoke about it, Newt always knew Hermann had stayed because of him.

As he sat alone and panicking in Alaska, Newt remembered that night and tried to conjure up the presence of Hermann in that lab, but it didn’t work. His breaths were still shallow and frantic. He remembered again their last argument before he had stormed out of their lab. It was petty and stupid and now he was never going to see Hermann again. He would die here, alone, and Hermann would never know what had happened to him. Days or weeks after Newt died, Hermann would die too, as the inevitable thousands of Kaiju came through the Breach.

Hermann would never be around to wait up with him at night, or to make annoying but helpful criticisms to his work, or to always _be around_ and driving him crazy. As Newt finally got his frantic breathing under control, he was saddened to know that Hermann was halfway around the world, probably not knowing or caring that he was gone, and he would be gone tomorrow morning.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fourteen hours had passed with excruciating slowness. Hermann had drummed his fingers on his leg with force, spinning the head of his cane in his hands. Raleigh couldn’t stop himself from pacing and Mako tried to be the calmest member of their team, but all three of them were keyed up, ready to get going.

They made their way to dinner, trying to put on a semblance of participation in the cult before they made their move. They sat at the most isolated table and barely touched their food, making only the most minimal efforts at eating the slop in front of them. They got some strange looks from the people next to them for it, but thankfully dinner was short and they made their way out the doors and walked back to the dormitories together.

As the people around them chatted and readied themselves for bed, Mako, Raleigh, and Hermann huddled around one of the beds.

Raleigh checked his watch. “It has now officially been fourteen hours. Now, I think we should go grab Newt first, because the transmitting device is near the doors out. We will go destroy that damn thing and grab the keys to anything we can find, and then we are getting out of here and not coming back.”

Mako and Hermann nodded in assent, and they moved towards the doors. Hermann looked over to see two of the cult members whispering to each other and looking at them. He didn’t like the suspicious look in their eyes, and knew that the sooner they got out of here, the better.

The three of them walked as quickly as they could without drawing unnecessary attention. They passed the mess hall and neared the atrium. Hermann looked behind him and saw in a panic that the two people from the dormitories were following them. He was about to tell Raleigh when the two of them turned into the atrium and went to talk to Pietro and a small group by the altar. It had been a false alarm.

Hermann brought to mind the twists and turns he took to Newton and led them down several hallways. They were only three turns away from the hallway Hermann had seen earlier when they heard footsteps behind them.

The three of them spun around to see a group of half a dozen cult members including Pietro walking right at them, including the two Hermann had seen earlier.

“That’s them!” One of them shouted. “The Jaeger pilots, don’t you recognize them?”

“Shit,” Raleigh breathed, pushing Mako and Hermann behind him. “Go, get Newt! I’ll hold them back.”

Mako and Raleigh shared a look and Mako grabbed Hermann’s hand, dragging him with her down the hall. They were both breathing heavily as they looked back at Raleigh keeping the hallway blocked. It was narrow, and he was trying to stop them from passing.

Hermann pointed left and they ran left, the sounds of a struggle echoing off the walls behind them. They ran down a few other hallways until Hermann looked around him in confusion. “I wasn’t here before. This is the wrong hallway.”

Mako pulled him back the way he came and they both ran, Hermann ignoring the jolt of pain that went through his knee at every step. They reached the right turn, the hallway where they were keeping Newt right around the corner. Right when they reached the right turn, the fight spilled over to their hallway, three cult members sprinting around the corner after Mako and Hermann. They ran as fast as they could, reaching the turn before the cult members caught up to them.

Mako went low, swiping her foot out so the man went flying over her and smacking into the wall. Another of the men came after her and she used all her body weight to drive him back into the wall with a sickening thud.

Hermann looked back in a panic, knowing he would not be able to outrun any of these people. The last cult member came at him, face twisted into an angry snarl. Remembering what Raleigh had said earlier, Hermann balanced his weight on his good leg and waited for him to get within arms’ reach until bringing his cane up and cracking him across the face. The man hit the floor, clutching his bloody nose, and while everyone was still occupied, Hermann took the turn and sprinted for the door.

In his haste, Hermann had forgotten about the guard, who was waiting in an alcove for him to run by before he jumped out and grabbed him, wrapping huge arms around his torso, trapping his arms. Hermann was dragged backward toward the rest of the fight, which, from the sounds of it, was winding down.

“No!” Hermann shouted, struggling against the man holding him. Newt’s door disappeared from sight as he was dragged around the corner, and he fell limp, knowing that they had failed. The man let him go, and Hermann dropped to the floor, cracking his knee on the stone floor. He gasped and held his knee as they dragged Raleigh around the corner, having been able to stop him.

Pietro took a closer look at Mako and Raleigh, and sighed. “Now I recognize you. Unfortunately, I knew your names better than your faces, but these two recognized you as soon as they saw you.”

None of them said anything, glaring up at all of the cult members. Pietro signalled with his hand, and Mako, Raleigh, and Hermann were dragged down several short hallways until they reached a dark room. Pietro unlocked it with a key and let the cult members shove the three of them into the room. Hermann looked up at the small, unfurnished room, hardly better than a closet.

“Under normal circumstances, I’d kill you for infiltrating our base, but that seems unnecessary now. I’ll just leave you here. In the morning, we will sacrifice your friend and the Kaiju will return, and after that, none of this will matter very much anyway.” Pietro smiled as he closed the door behind him, and the three of them felt their stomachs drop as they were left in darkness.


	12. Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! So, this story is finally drawing to a close. The next chapter should be the last one, so look forward to the conclusion real soon!

Once the next morning came, Newt was wide awake and waiting for the door to open. He hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Every time his eyes closed, the hive mind filled the darkness his eyelids left.

Hours ago, he thought he heard shouting coming from outside his door, a fight and indistinct voices echoing off the rock walls, but they went away as soon as they appeared, and he almost thought he imagined it.

As much as he willed it not to, eventually the door slid open and Natasha, Pietro, and two others were in the doorway, garbed in dark robes and face markings. They were silent and so was he as they chained his hands together and dragged him out of the room for the last time. Newt followed along, dazed, his vision swimming. He thought of running or fighting or screaming, but Natasha’s warning yesterday ran through his head.

Something was different, and he didn’t realize until they entered the silent atrium. There was nobody here but the five of them, no crowd awaiting them, only the echo of their footsteps through the hall. The statue of Trespasser was almost more menacing in the absence of people, as if he were finally achieving his sole purpose.

Instead of stopping at the altar like every other time, they kept walking towards the back and the statue until a stairwell was revealed, curling and snaking upwards through the rock. Becoming a single-file line, the group starting walking up the stairs. The steps were slick with condensation, and Newt had to be careful he didn’t lose his footing.

After a long climb, the group emerged from the stairwell to the slightest gust of cool air. Newt gaped as they walked into a huge alcove in the side of the cliff. The pseudo-cave was enclosed on three sides, the open side looking right out at the ocean. The muffled break of the waves on the cliffs that Newt had been hearing for a week were now clear and close, the spray washing in on the far edge of the cave.

It was incredibly warm here considering they were facing the open air, and although the ocean spray drove a cold draft toward the back, the warmth coming from the rocks themselves gave the cave a strange feeling.

Unlike the altar room below where everything was empty, here the cave was filled with the cult members. They were pressed into the walls, lined up next to each other and facing the front. Ciaran stood at the front, the open air behind him ruffling his hair in the wind.

The machine that Newt had found earlier was resting to the side, and it looked out of place among all of the mysticism that surrounded it. There were symbols painted on the side similar to those painted on the faces of the faithful, as if making an effort to blend it in.

Not one word was spoken as they led Newt up to the altar. There was a divot in the ground, and right above it hung a hook bolted into the ceiling. They yanked his arms up and attached the chain to the hook, then stepped back. The hook was clearly intended for a slightly taller person, and Newt had to push himself up, but his feet barely touched the floor, and he was essentially dangling.

Newt’s heart was hammering in his chest as the chanting and humming began. Unlike the rest of the ceremonies, in this one, there was no sermon, only communal chanting. A storm raged and swirled behind them, and Newt could hear far-off thunder echoing over the water.

Newt’s arms were starting to go numb when the chanting stopped. Ciaran checked his watch discretely, and held up his hands to the crowd. He stood in front of the machine and slowly unscrewed the lid of the fluid-filled container with the Kaiju claw.

Ciaran rolled up his sleeves and began to speak. “First, an offering to modern science. Its day is fast drawing to a close, but every death requires blood.” His hands immersed in the water, Ciaran pulled out the Kaiju claw himself, his hands dripping with chemicals and ammonia. The slot on the side of the machine was opened and Ciaran pressed the claw deep into the prongs. It had been sitting in preserving fluid for so long it was falling apart in his hands, long pieces of dead skin sloughing off and dropping on the ground. The prongs in the slot jutted through the claw and the machine quickly whirred to life, a series of blinking lights going off one by one before holding steady.

Almost immediately, the ground underneath them shook like an earthquake. There was a heavy rumbling and the storm in the distance picked up in intensity. The ocean roiled and suddenly Newt could _hear_ them.

Hundreds upon thousands of them were behind him, on the thin membrane between the ceiling of their world and the floor of ours, every single one of them thrashing and pressing and clawing at the space. They could all hear him, knew he was there on the other side. Newt was the bright point on this side of the Breach calling the Kaiju through. They couldn’t get their bodies through yet, and so their minds were pushing through instead. All the Kaiju waiting on the other side for their chance to destroy cities and millions of people were all crowding into Newt’s mind, but they needed one final push, one extra drop of union.

Newt groaned and pressed his eyes closed, trying to push them out, his head pounding fit to burst. Through the roaring wind and reptilian minds was the scuff of a shoe and the scrape of metal as it was drawn out of its sheath.

Newt opened his eyes to see Ciaran standing in front of him, a long, gleaming blade in his left hand.

“Second, an offering of blood from the Abomination. May the Precursors receive these gifts in good faith.” This part was spoken to the audience, stage presence and calm evident.

Ciaran turned slowly around to face Newt, and Newt’s vision swum, two Ciaran’s separating and then uniting again in front of his eyes. He clenched his fists, the pain in his wrists holding off the millions trying to push into his mind. They were only just held at bay, and Newt panted with the effort, panic throbbing behind every muscle.

Ciaran stepped closer, and now this wasn’t the stage Ciaran, this was the Ciaran who was stood across from the Golden Gate Bridge on K-Day as the world as he knew it was destroyed by a monster hundreds of feet tall, who saw not terror and destruction but promise. He was smiling as he brought the knife up near Newt. He rested the tip of the blade at the sensitive skin on the inside of Newt’s arm, and paused.

“Any last words? How does it _feel_?” His eyes were shining with fanaticism, and Newt knew he felt their presence just as he could.

Newt frowned, expending all his efforts on forming enough brainpower to create words. He spit in Ciaran’s face. “Fuck you,” he croaked, but Ciaran merely wiped his face and nodded.

In a quick, practiced stroke, Ciaran drew the knife all the way down Newt’s arm until it reached the inside of his elbow. Newt shrieked and the blood began pooling with the ammonia from the Kaiju claw on the side, flowing through the track on the way out towards the sea. He barely felt it as Ciaran did the same to his other arm. The Kaiju felt the push, the lapse in self-control and they surged forward. They moved into Newt’s mind, but it was his mind battling against thousands of foreign invaders. The ocean underneath them pulsed deep and ran a darker color as the space was weakened.

The barrier left between the two worlds was paper-thin, and it only needed one last stroke before the Kaiju flooded through the Breach by the thousands.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ocean lurched under them as Herc and Tendo clambered onto the giant ocean liner. After their phone call with Raleigh and Mako yesterday, they had been swamped by a storm with waves dozens of feet high. On their tiny schooner, they hadn’t stood a chance, and all night was spent holding on for dear life, Herc’s hands gripping the steering wheel in a death grip that he maintained for hours until they finally caught sight of the aircraft carrier again across the sea.

Tendo hadn’t even realized it was morning yet as the dark clouds swirling above them and the pounding rain made it hard to register any change in light. As they got closer and closer, the waves didn’t seem to get better. If anything, they got worse, and they only just set foot on the ladder on the side of the carrier as their small ship capsized and floated away on the ocean.

Herc and Tendo looked back at it in incredulity for a moment before clambering up the ladder. When they reached the deck, they rested for a moment, breathing heavily. Tendo’s legs were so rubbery he thought he might collapse, but they were already hours late, and they couldn’t stop.

Herc hefted the flare gun he managed to grab before they abandoned ship, intending on using it on the first person they came across. Oddly, the more levels they climbed, the more it was obvious the ship was empty. They didn’t come across one crew member. The ship was abandoned.

There was a humming sound coming from the main deck, and Herc and Tendo climbed the stairs as fast as they could, the huge waves pounding the outside of the ocean liner with such force the giant ship swayed in the water.

They reached the door to the deck and Herc took a moment, his hand on the door handle before he yanked it open, lifting the flare gun within sight to get the upper hand. This was unnecessary, the entire deck being empty. If possible, the rain had gotten even worse on their trip through the ship, a thunderclap sounding like an explosion above their heads.

Bolted to the deck far enough away that it was shielded from the ocean spray was a huge metal cylinder. It had a long-range antenna connected to it and its lights were beeping on and off in order.

Herc heard a long roar from a Kaiju echo through the air and his skin turned clammy. “How do we turn this thing off, Tendo?”

Tendo had run straight for it, pulling out the waterlogged blueprints from his jacket pocket and examining the machine.

“Well, for one, these lights shouldn’t be blinking.” He said, trying to turn a lever without success.

“Why not?” Herc asked.

“Because that means this thing is receiving a signal. Which means the other one hasn’t been shut off.”

“Which means that Raleigh and Mako failed.” Herc said in disbelief. He was afraid this was going to happen.

Tendo wrapped his arms around the device and lifted with his legs, grunting. “Yeah, this thing isn’t going anywhere. I don’t think we can turn it off. Once the device starts to receive its signal, the thing locks itself down.”

Herc looked down at the heaving ocean. “What does that mean for us, Mr. Choi?”

Tendo stopped trying to push the device over, breathing heavily. “It means we’re stuck on this boat and there’s nothing we can do, sir. The Breach could open any minute.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hermann bounced up and down on his toes impatiently, the urge to ask if Mako could move any faster was almost overwhelming, but he knew he had to give her space.

For the past two hours, Mako had been crouched in front of the keyhole using the scant light coming through the cracks to pick the lock with a pin from her hair.

They had tried every other method, jamming their fingers through the cracks, Raleigh ramming the door with his shoulder, but the door didn’t move an inch. Mako finally tried to pick the lock, admitting that she had never tried before, but knew how to do it in theory.

Predictably, picking locks was much harder in reality than it was in theory, and her sighs of frustration were frequent as she tried again and again to move the tumbler aside so the lock would open.

After the thousandth try, Mako’s breath hitched as the lock did, and it slowly turned and all three of them heard a click. For a moment, nobody was prepared to try the doorknob, but Mako grabbed it and the door eased open.

They were all blinded by the soft light, and they threw their hands up to protect their eyes. Hermann was the first to recover, running forward so Mako and Raleigh would follow him.

All three of them sprinted back the way they had come. Without much hope, they turned down the hallway to Newt’s room. There was nobody there and the door was hanging open.

Raleigh groaned in frustration and turned the other way, Mako and Hermann following him back through the twists and turns to the main area of the compound. Every turn they tensed, expecting someone to be there when they turned, but everywhere was silent, the halls abandoned.

They ran through the dormitories and the front office and finally the atrium, but there were no clues left behind, only empty rooms. All three drew to a halt breathing heavily.

“Where did they go?” Raleigh asked, hands on his knees.

“They can’t have cleared that many people out of this place. It’s only been a few hours and there were hundreds of them.” Mako said.

Their discussion was interrupted by Hermann’s cane as it clattered onto the floor. He gasped and clutched at his arm. It felt like it had just been sliced open, but he looked down and it was clear.

Hermann bent down to pick up his cane off the floor where it had rolled right up to the altar. He looked up to see the staircase leading into the rock of the wall.

“There’s a staircase,” He breathed, and took to the stairs, Raleigh and Mako right behind him.

Every step they took, the sound of the storm outside and the waves pounding against the cliff got louder and louder, a hum suffused the air.

The three of them ran out of the stairwell into the cave, and Hermann’s breath went out of his lungs.

The cult members were lined up, heads inclined toward the front where Newt was hanging, blood dripping down with ammonia and mixing with the ocean water swirling across the ground, wind howling through the hole. Mako watched in disbelief as one person disappeared over the side, only to be joined by another. There was a line of them, leaping into the ocean where it swirled, the Kaiju waiting deep below.

There was a deep thumping growl that went through the air, the barrier between the Kaiju and this world almost nonexistent. They ran forward without hesitation, and to their surprise, most of the cult members didn’t try to stop them. Only a few stepped out, and Raleigh stepped to the front, taking the brunt of the force and pushing them away.

Mako and Hermann split off, Mako heading for the machine to try and tear it apart, but Hermann only had eyes for Newt.

“Oh God, Newton, no,” Hermann said, running forward. As he got closer, he saw Newt’s eyes were still fluttering, which meant he was still alive. Electricity crackled through the air and Hermann pushed desperately at Newt’s arms, trying to get them off the hook, but it was too high and Raleigh and Mako were still occupied.

“Newton, please, can you hear me?” Hermann asked, his voice cracking. Another person hit the water below and he jumped. He repeated Newton’s name again but received no response.

Without warning, the ground underneath them shifted like an earthquake, and they all looked off the ledge in horror to see things _moving_ in the water, legs and scales and tails glowing blue in the bay.

Hermann turned back to Newt to see he was looking right at him, eyes wide and glowing blue. The electricity from the storm and the machine left marks in the water, moving down to travel through Newt and he shifted and groaned with the Kaiju in the water.

Hermann’s heart was in his mouth as he saw the rope holding the hook up. He pulled at it, and Newt’s arms dropped, but miraculously stayed standing. He swayed where he stood, face twisting like he was fighting something off.

He swayed backward, getting dangerously close to the water, his eyes sightless. Hermann screamed and ran forward, grabbing Newt by the lapels, pulling him back from the edge, but Newt was still leaning backward, the hive mind battling in him to push through his mind and take over.

“No! Newton, please listen to my voice, I know you’re still in there.” Hermann tried, his voice tripping over itself in desperation. The two of them swayed one way toward the water and then back the other way, but Hermann wouldn’t let go of Newt even if he toppled into the water himself.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hermann saw Ciaran step backwards off the ledge himself, smiling beatifically as he fell into the ocean to drown.

Newt’s foot dipped over the edge, the balance leaning closer to the water than the cave. Hermann’s grip loosened on Newt’s lapels and he grabbed his arms, slick blood helping Newt slide slowly. Hermann thought he might lose his grip on Newt, but the physical contact seemed to change something, and Newt shook his head ever so slightly, the blue dimming. Hermann could feel some of the power from the hive mind reach him, and he jerked and shuddered, the thousands of minds pushing at him, but just like the neural load, two minds were better than one, and he could feel the tide turning, the overwhelming pressure subsiding some. Newt’s eyes cleared a little, and he looked at him, saw him for the first time.

“Hermann?” He asked softly.

Hermann nodded, but before he could say anything one of the people behind him pulled him back so he fell onto the ground before they too disappeared over the edge. All the ground Hermann had won dissipated, and Newton hovered close to the edge again, the brown of his eyes changing with the blue of the hive mind.

Hermann gasped, reaching for Newt before he could fall. “Newton, don’t go! Please don’t leave me, Newton, _please_!” His voice cracked and he managed to grab the edges of Newt’s fingers as his balance tipped. Newt stopped tipping, the brown of his eyes returning and they both gasped as the hive mind swirled between the two of them and their fingers met.

Newt was looking down at him, and this time, Hermann knew he was really seeing him.

“Hermann,” Newt breathed, sounding incredulous. “You’re here. You came after me.”

Hermann squeezed his fingers tighter, maintaining the scant grip he had. “I did. I’m really here, Newton. You can’t go. I’ve missed you. Please stay.”

There was a pause and Newt closed his eyes and concentrated, pushing back against the hive mind shoving their way in. They had a foothold, but Newt could feel Hermann’s hands in his, and every step seemed easier until he closed his brain to them, his mind his own again.

The storm didn’t cease until Mako found a metal beam resting in the foundation. She ran at the machine and shoved it through, circuits bursting and metal overheating as the machine died. There was a huge growl from the ocean as the signal was broken.

The signal was broken and their link through Newt was gone, the Breach closing slowly and permanently. The Kaiju were gone, they had won.

Newt’s eyes were still on Hermann as he fell forward, collapsing without the weight of the hive mind holding him up. Hermann gasped, cradling Newt’s head in his arms as his vision swum. Newt was still bleeding, and Hermann hurriedly ripped shreds from his undershirt and wrapped them around his arms.

So many of the cult members had jumped into the ocean already, but once the Kaiju were gone, the rest stopped, staring down at the ocean like it would offer up something more after all. Some fled, some stayed silent, but all of them seemed to forget the interlopers between them. All of them were left on their own again.

Raleigh fought off the last of the cult members who was determined to come after them, and then saw Newt bleeding on the ground.

“I’m getting that satellite phone. I’ll call for help. Hold on,” He said, taking off for the stairs as fast as he could. Mako stood around Hermann and Newt protectively, in case any of the cult members remembered them, but that seemed unnecessary as most of them drifted away, completely uninterested in them.

Newt’s fingers were loosening their grip on Hermann, the blood seeping through the makeshift bandages he had made. A tear dropped on Newt’s shirt, and Hermann was surprised and slightly embarrassed to find he was crying.

“Are you really here, Hermann?” Newt asked, his voice slurring and his eyes drooping closed. “Because I keep thinking you’re here, and then you’re not.”

“I’m really here, Newton.” Hermann said, cupping Newt’s cheek almost tenderly. “Raleigh is getting help, just hold on until then.”

“Hey, you keep calling me Newton. Have you had a stroke?” Newt said, laughing weakly.

“One or two.” Hermann said, only half joking.

“You know, I’ve decided you were right.” Newt’s eyes were closing, his voice getting weaker, and Hermann’s heartbeat quickened. They can’t have come all this way just for Newt to die.

“I’m right about a lot of things, you’ll have to be more specific.” He said, looking up at Mako helplessly. She was grim-faced watching Newt fade away.

“I probably shouldn’t be running after black market bosses. Maybe I should just stay in the Shatterdome next time.” Newt said.

“God help me, there will be no next time.” Hermann said. Newt’s eyes were closed, but he was still breathing, and Hermann waited there with him until they heard the far-off sound of helicopters coming across the bay.


	13. An End (But Not The End)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the story, at long last. I want to thank everyone who has read through this whole story and left comments and kudos, and everything. It definitely means a lot, so a big thank you to all of you!

Newt’s eyes opened, and he didn’t understand what he was looking at for a moment. A transparent IV bag hung in the corner of his vision against a white ceiling. He couldn’t remember what happened to him, but then it all came back to him in a rush.

In a panic, Newt sat up as fast as he could and immediately regretted it, the sudden movement reminding his pain receptors to start working again. Everything seemed to hurt, and Newt was panicking, still determined to get out of bed when a group of people came running over from the other side of the room, saying his name.

Newt couldn’t think straight and he tried to fight them off until Hermann’s voice broke through the panicked haze.

“Newton, it’s me! It’s us, you’re safe. Please lay back down, you’re still hurt quite badly.” Newt took a moment to breathe and saw Hermann standing over him, face worried and pale. Only then did he process the rest of the people around his bed; Raleigh, Mako, Tendo, and Herc were there, as well as a doctor hovering over his bed.

“You’ll pull off your bandages, Dr. Geiszler. Stay calm.” The doctor said, checking something on the IV line.

Newt looked down in confusion to see his arms covered in bandages. His head was still pounding and he felt exhausted and hungry, but he realized this headache was just the regular kind, not the hive mind pulsing in the background kind.

“What happened?” He asked. “After I passed out, I mean. Everything is a little…” Newt waved his hand around noncommittally and immediately regretted it.

Newt listened quietly as they told him how after he passed out the helicopters arrived with agents from the Council that swarmed the base. Most of the cult members left on base were so dazed they allowed themselves to be taken off for questioning. Pietro Adami and Natasha Brennan were arrested a few miles away from camp trying to escape in a snowmobile.

“The Council is up their necks in these people, and they’ve been calling me and demanding I give them a full report, like that wasn’t what I was trying to do before. Did they want to help then? No, they told me to fuck off, but they’re sure interested now that everything is over. Typical.” Herc grumbled, here in the infirmary as a way of avoiding the incessant calls from the Council that he had been subject to the last few days.

“We thought we were done for,” Tendo added, trying to derail the angry rant that would come from Herc if he kept speaking.

“Back on that ship. We saw some things in the water, man.” Mako gave Tendo a sharp look, and he quickly moved on. “What you guys did on your end worked, though. The signal cut out and the receiving device just - stopped working. It was a good thing that ship still had a working radio or we might still be out there.”

They went on to tell Newt how an international arrest warrant had been put out for Michael Harmon and his business partner Heng Guo, but Newt was finding it hard to concentrate, and he knew they were leaving something out.

“What about Ciaran?” Newt interrupted. He was afraid that they were leaving him out because he was still out there somewhere.

Hermann and Raleigh shared a look. “He’s dead.” Raleigh said. “Later, after the tide washed out, we found dozens of bodies broken on the rocks. Ciaran Flood was identified as one of them. He’s gone.”

Newt closed his eyes and leaned back, a breath of relief rushing out of him. The doctor then cut in, telling everyone to leave.

“You can all catch up with Dr. Geiszler later on. He has been through quite an ordeal. I need to have a discussion with him, and then he needs to sleep. Consider visiting hours over.”

There were rushed promises that they would come visit later on and see how he was getting on, and Newt nodded, eyes pressed shut against the pounding of his exhaustion working to catch up with him.

Hermann stayed behind with Newt as the doctor explained Newt’s condition to him.

“It’s lucky your friends found you when they did, arm injuries notwithstanding. Malnutrition, exhaustion, the beginnings of hypothermia, various bruises and lesions. It’s a miracle you’re as healthy as you are now.”

Hermann glared at the doctor, and he cleared his throat and continued. Clearly his bedside manner left something to be desired. “As for the… slices on your arms, thankfully they were fairly shallow. If they had been any deeper, you might have bled out, but they were largely superficial. We got to them pretty quickly, and they might not even leave very noticeable scars.”

Newt picked at the edge of one of the bandages. “What about my tattoos?”

The doctor shrugged. “I think your tattoos will be fine. They will probably have a line through them, but maybe that will give them character.”

“How much more character do full-sleeve tattoos need?” Hermann asked dryly, and Newt snorted despite himself.

The doctor, looking bemused, nodded and backed away. “Anyway, I suggest you get some sleep. At this point, rest and relaxation may be the best salves.”

The doctor left and Hermann was left standing beside Newt’s bed in the large, empty infirmary. He shifted from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable.

“Well, you really should get some sleep.” Hermann said, avoiding eye contact. He moved to walk away, and Newt thought about being left alone in this room. He reached out as quick as he could and grabbed Hermann’s wrist.

“Please don’t go,” He croaked, his eyes wide. “Don’t leave me alone.”

Whether he echoed Hermann’s words consciously, Hermann didn’t know, but Newt’s tone of desperation, so uncharacteristic, shocked him into stopping. He brought his other hand and clasped it around Newt’s.

Pulling up a chair, Hermann sat down, stretching his leg out. “If you insist.”

Newt looked over at him, eyes tired but the corners of his mouth turned up in a half-smile. “You know, I think this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had where we haven’t started arguing.”

Hermann grunted. “I should nip that in the bud now, shouldn’t I? Which one of our age-old arguments would you like to reopen?”

Newt snorted, and Hermann looked across the room. He was out of his depth. For the past few weeks, his only concern had been getting back to Newton, but now that they were together, he wasn’t sure how to react with him.

He looked back at Newt and saw how tired he was. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes red, but he was still wide awake. He should be sleeping, but something was stopping him.

“It’s all over now, you know that, right?” Hermann said finally, looking at Newt. This time Newt was the one to avoid eye contact.

Newt pulled his hands away and picked at the thread of the blanket. “That’s what we said last time.”

“This time it’s true.” Hermann said, sounding self-assured.

Newt leaned back, and Hermann could see how hard it was for him to keep himself together. “How can you know that?” Newt said finally, looking at him.

Hermann thought for a moment. “I have faith.”

Newt’s mouth was a thin line. Belief was one of the things that, although their opinions were as different as night and day, they had never argued about. “Faith in what?”

Hermann took Newt’s hand again, his warm fingers lacing with Newt’s cold ones. “Among other things, in us. That this time will be different.”

“How?” Newt asked, sounding like he wanted to trust him.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Hermann added. “Please go to sleep. You are exhausted. I will be here when you wake up.”

Newt looked at him for a moment. “Promise?”

Hermann squeezed his fingers in answer. Newt took that as his cue to lean back into his bed. Within seconds, his eyes slid closed and he was asleep.

Hermann watched him sleep, and sighed deeply. This was the first moment of peace they had for weeks. His gaze travelled up from his thin body and exhausted face, to the bruises just now starting to heal around his face. He looked at where their hands were clasped together and saw the purple lesions around Newt’s wrists. His stomach clenched in anger and he felt a cruel satisfaction at the thought of Ciaran Flood’s body broken at the foot of those rocks.

Newt’s exhaustion had worked in his favor. Yet again, Hermann had been granted a reprieve from talking with Newton, although he knew this was the last time. He would have to face up to his own emotional ineptitude sooner or later, and it seemed later had finally arrived.

After a time, Hermann fell asleep himself, and the two stayed where they were for the night, hands clasped together.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day, the infirmary deemed Newt stable enough to go back to his own quarters, and they discharged him. Newt wriggled into some of his clothes with difficulty. He was dizzy and shaky on his feet, but insisted on walking there instead of being taken in a wheelchair. Hermann didn’t press the issue.

They made their way to the cafeteria, and about halfway there Newt’s legs almost gave out, and he had to rest against a wall. Hermann offered his arm and Newt took it, Hermann using Newt for balance and Newt leaning half his weight on Hermann with every step.

“We look like a circus act.” Newt grumbled, collapsing into the first cafeteria seat that presented itself. Hermann went to get food for the two of them, and sat down to eat.

After nearly five minutes, Newt still hadn’t eaten anything, pushing the food around on his plate. His eyes were flitting about at the people around them. Hermann hadn’t noticed until this moment, but quite a few of them were staring at Newt. Hermann hadn’t even considered that many of them would be interested in the return of their kidnapped scientist.

“I can’t be here.” Newt said, pushing his food away and walking to the exit. Hermann followed him only to find him doubled over in the hall, face pressed into his hands and shuddering breaths escaping from him.

This, at least, was familiar. Hermann eased Newt down to a sitting position, and talked him through the panic attack.

“Just concentrate on your breathing, Newton. Slow and even, that’s it.” Newt’s flushed face and shallow breaths slowly eased out until he could stand up.

“There’s too.. many people in there. I don’t want people staring at me right now.” Newt said, memories of pews of silent hooded men and women standing silent as they force fed him poison running through his mind.

They went downstairs instead towards the lab. Hermann watched as Newt walked into their trashed lab, one hand running along a table.

In all the excitement of leaving, he had forgotten that the lab was still much the same as after it had been broken into, only the major things cleaned up off the floor.

“They were supposed to come around and clean some of this up,” Hermann said, straightening stray piles of paper as if that would improve the appearance of the lab.

“We can do it.” Newt said, turning back around. He was still pale and undernourished, but the determined look in his eye was more like the Newton that Hermann knew that he went along with it.

The rest of the day was spent cleaning up the broken glass and putting everything back in its proper place. Hermann watched Newt’s side of the lab go from a complete mess to the kind of mess that only made sense to Newton himself. Hermann knew how tired Newton would be and how much he needed rest, but he also knew how much he needed this.

Late in the afternoon, Mako and Raleigh found them down there and shut the door behind them.

“The Marshall told us to keep you hidden down here. There are some people from the Council here, and they wanted to talk with you. The Marshall told them you were recuperating in the infirmary, so maybe we can buy you some more time.” Raleigh said, checking the hallway outside for men in suits.

“We thought you would not want to talk with them now.” Mako said. Newt looked a little pale at the thought of being cross-examined again, and he shook his head.

Mako and Raleigh stayed for the rest of the night, helping to pick up the rest of the debris in the lab until it was impossible to tell it had been broken into and trashed. They went up and brought food from the cafeteria at dinnertime, and the four of them ate in the lab, the quiet hum of machinery behind them.

Hermann was glad to see Newt eating something finally, a little color returning to his cheeks. Eventually, Mako and Raleigh left to go to bed. Newt’s eyes were drooping closed, and Hermann stood up.

“Bed, I think.” He said, clearly motioning Newt toward the door.

Newt managed to frown and look amused at the same time. “Is that a subtle hint, Hermann, because it wasn’t very subtle.”

“You need sleep, Newton. You were supposed to be in bed today.” Hermann said.

Newt looked uncomfortable and scratched the back of his neck. “Nah, I don’t really think I can sleep right now. I think I’ll just… stay here.”

Hermann threw his hands up. “Newton, you are clearly exhausted. You’re falling asleep at your desk. After what you went through, you need sleep.”

“But it’s _because_ of what I went through that I can’t sleep!” Newt yelled finally, standing up and looking at Hermann in desperation. “Don’t you think I _want_ to sleep? I feel like I haven’t slept in weeks, but every time I shut my eyes, I see them crawling out of the ocean and shoving themselves into my head or them drugging me or, just, I can’t. I can’t do it, Hermann.”

His voice cracked on the last syllable, and Hermann was at a loss for what to do. He had never been good at comforting people.

“Come with me. You can sleep in my room. That way you won’t be alone.” Hermann said softly.

Newt looked at him for a moment, eyes red. “You would do that for me?”

Hermann nodded and Newt followed him back to his room. Hermann closed the door and Newt stood in the threshold awkwardly as Hermann settled in, setting down his cane and taking his shoes off.

Newt finally took his shoes off and shed his jacket, laying it over a chair. Hermann sat at the edge of the bed, not knowing quite how to make this work. His bed was big enough for two people, but he had rarely slept in a bed with another person.

Hermann didn’t need to worry as Newt sat down next to him. He had shed his jeans self-consciously and was just in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Hermann turned off the light, and pulled Newt into the bed beside him.

For a while, they lay in the dark without speaking. Hermann lay on his back, and he could feel Newt’s weight on the other side of the bed, but neither of them moved any closer, and eventually Hermann succumbed to his tiredness and fell asleep.

He wasn’t sure how much later it was, but he awoke to small whimpering noises next to him. He opened his eyes in confusion and turned toward Newt. He was curled in on his side, making sounds of fear and speaking incoherently. Newt was having a nightmare, and Hermann shook his shoulder gently as Newt shot awake, gasping and panicking.

Hermann rubbed his back and talked him through the panic attack. He stopped breathing shallowly, but he was still shaking and Hermann eased himself down and wrapped his arms around Newt from behind, letting Newt ride it out.

“I thought I was back there, in Alaska.” Newt’s voice came out quiet. “I was back in that hall. There was a Kaiju crawling across the floor towards me, and I couldn’t move. There were so many people there, but they didn’t do anything, they just watched.”

This dream unleashed the floodgates and suddenly Newt was talking, telling Hermann everything that had happened. He had to stop at certain points, but he always picked up the thread again, his voice shaking. Hermann clenched his fists at certain points, astounded and angry at what they had done to Newton, but he didn’t say anything, just held Newt and let him ride it out.

“The whole time I was there, I felt so alone, Hermann. I felt like the last person left, and I thought I would never see you again.” Hermann couldn’t see Newt’s face, but his voice carried the weight of his fear. “I didn’t even know whether you cared I was gone.”

“I cared immensely, Newton. I know I am, not the best at expressing myself, but I can’t tell you how much you mean to me. The entire time you were gone, I didn’t know what I would have done if you were gone.”

Newt inhaled sharply, and Hermann felt his back warm against his chest. All of a sudden, everything that had happened the past few weeks caught up to him, and Newt let himself go, tears springing to his eyes that he couldn’t stop. Newt sobbed, but Hermann held him all the tighter until the crying stopped.

Neither of them moved, comfortable pressed up against each other. After all that time spent fighting and arguing and pining, this felt good, this felt right. Hermann felt at home, like he was holding his other half after spending so long separate.

Enveloped in each other, they fell asleep. Newt didn’t have another nightmare, and they slept all night.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next few days were a flurry of activity around the Shatterdome. To Herc’s immense irritation, the Council sent several representatives after the fact to ‘look into the matter’, as they put it. Herc’s angry reaction to their inaction when their support could actually have been utilized was a terrifying thing to witness, and the Council members left in a few days after gathering information for their report.

Two days later, news of the arrests of Michael Harmon and Heng Guo reached the Shatterdome. They had been arrested trying to get on a plane in Italy, and were now being shipped back to face charges for their crimes.

Hannibal Chau even showed up at the Shatterdome one day. He presented a pickled Kaiju parasite in a jar to a very confused Newt and then marched up to Herc, demanding some kind of compensation for his ‘help’.

Hannibal left the Shatterdome after the most professional ‘go fuck yourself’ that Herc could manage.

The Shatterdome resumed regular functioning, and a new division was created to look into how Michael Harmon and Ciaran Flood had been able to get their hands on the machinery that they did. The Breach was sealed for good this time, but it could never hurt to be cautious, and regular patrols were set up by the international government to make sure nobody went across the Breach and tried something like opening it again.

For Newt and Hermann, nothing much changed. They continued working, and after a few days, the same arguments could be heard echoing down the hallways of the science division of the Shatterdome. While they were still seen walking everywhere together, this didn’t end at the end of the day, as Newt took to sleeping in Hermann’s room almost every night.

Newt still had nightmares frequently, and the psychological toll from what had happened to him would take time to heal, but the proximity of Hermann fought half the battle.

A week and a half after it was all over, Newt and Hermann walked out to the observation deck, looking down at the cold ocean as workers buzzed around behind them working on aircraft and machinery.

There was some weight the ocean carried still, even after the Breach was sealed up. They were assured that the Breach could not be opened again, and while Newt felt a certain sense of reservation about that, Hermann’s promise also carried a lot of weight.

Instead of being separated, Newt felt united with Hermann in a way that he wouldn’t have believed two months ago.

The road was long, and maybe it would never come to an end, but there was something to be said about taking a walk along the ocean with your lab partner.

Hermann was pointing out all the logical fallacies in a recent scientific article that had been circulating recently, and Newt rolled his eyes.

“I will literally pay you to stop talking, Hermann.” He said.

“I will stop talking about it when shoddy articles stop making their way into respected academic journals.” Hermann shot back, and the two continued arguing all the way back inside the Shatterdome.

End


End file.
